Aug. 28 at 1:55 AM
$SPY $QQQ $NVDA $CRM $MRVL
MARKET SUMMARY:
- Eight out of 11 S&P 500 sectors finished the day in the red on Thursday, and yet the benchmark index registered a positive session thanks to broad-based strength seen across the Technology sector.
- Consumer names - cyclical and staples - were the worst performing areas of the market, followed closely by the recent out-performer Healthcare.
- Nvidia's (NVDA) earnings and constructive outlook for next year reported overnight re-established the AI capex buildout as the dominant theme driving market sentiment, sending shares of the preeminent chip designer up 9% to its highest level since the first week of June.
- Concurrently, blowout earnings out of Salesforce (CRM), along with the company's announcement of a deeper partnership with Anthropic, strained the bearish thesis of a "SaaS-pocalypse" that has haunted enterprise software space since early weeks of this year.
- For quite some time, Software stocks have traded antithetically to the pro-AI-capex areas of the market - semiconductors, semi equipment, memory, and hardware - yet today, the two themes surged in step.
- iShares Software Sector ETF (IGV) was up nearly 8% on the day, rising to its best levels of the year.
- In turn, the popular proxy Semiconductor ETF (SMH) - where Nvidia holds a 20% contribution - was up over 3% on the day.
- In the opening hour of the evening session, S&P e-minis are down 0.2% while Nasdaq Composite is off by 0.3%, with Thursday's positive sentiment somewhat diffused by relatively in-line results from Marvell Technology.
- Traders are also on edge heading into Friday's Jackson Hole address by Kevin Warsh, with markets preparing to dissect the speech for clues on the new Fed Chair's thinking about persistent inflation, resilient labor market, and the recent pressure in the longer-dated Treasury market.
