The tech-heavy Nasdaq led losses on Wall Street on Tuesday as chipmaker Nvidia fell sharply ahead of its highly anticipated earnings report, while retail industry bellwether Walmart’s upbeat forecast limited losses on the Dow.
Shares of the chip designer fell nearly 6%, while the broader Philadelphia semiconductor index shed 2.5% as other chip stocks also followed.
Investors are worried if Nvidia’s quarterly results, expected after markets close on Wednesday, will justify its lofty valuation and add to the frenzy around artificial intelligence (AI) or hurt AI optimism.
AI-fueled bets have helped Nvidia become the third-most valuable U.S. company and recently replace Tesla as Wall Street’s most traded stock. Tesla shares fell 3.9%.
“The sellout that we’re seeing today is driven by the reversal in SMCI (Super Micro Computer) because a lot of hot money was chasing these AI names and then we had the vicious selloff on Friday,” said Dennis Dick, a trader at Triple D Trading.
Shares in Super Micro Computer extended losses by 11.3%, after finishing down 20% on Friday as investors took a break from betting on the stock as a big beneficiary of strong AI technology demand.
Walmart hit a record high and was last up 3.4% after the U.S. retail giant forecast fiscal 2025 sales largely above Wall Street expectations and raised its annual dividend by 9%. This helped cushion the impact on Dow Jones.
The S&P 500 consumer staples sector, which houses Walmart, rose 1.1%, while information technology dropped 1.8%.
A weeks-long rally on Wall Street was stalled by hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation data last week that dampened market expectations for an imminent start to the Federal Reserve’s easing cycle.
The rate cut is expected in June, according to a slim majority of economists polled by Reuters, who also flagged risk of a further delay in the first cut.
Investors are awaiting the release of minutes from the Fed’s latest policy meeting as well as remarks from a slew of central bank officials later this week.
At 11:40 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 49.57 points, or 0.13%, at 38,578.42, the S&P 500 was down 32.50 points, or 0.65%, at 4,973.07, and the Nasdaq Composite was down 195.28 points, or 1.24%, at 15,580.37.
Smart-TV maker Vizio jumped 14.9% after Walmart said it would buy the company for $2.3 billion.
Discover Financial Services surged 14.4% on Warren Buffett-backed consumer bank Capital One’s plans to acquire the U.S. credit card issuer in a $35.3 billion deal.
Intel added 0.6% following a report on Friday that the Biden administration is in talks to award more than $10 billion in subsidies to the semiconductor firm.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 1.31-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and for a 1.63-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded 27 new 52-week highs and three new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 53 new highs and 65 new lows.
Wall St returns from its long weekend to a mix of interest rate cut doubts, retailer updates and the biggest U.S. corporate deal of the year - while China’s latest monetary easing was brushed off by markets overseas.
With the Federal Reserve releasing minutes of its January policy meeting on Wednesday, the rates market has been dragged kicking and screaming back closer to where the Fed had originally indicated at the end of last year.
After sparky new year consumer and producer price readings last week, two and 10-year Treasury yields hit their highest for 2024 on Friday and Fed futures pricing now has little more than 90 basis points of cuts in the mix for the year.
That’s now within range of the 75bps of 2024 cuts indicated by Fed policymakers in December.
Don’t fight the Fed?
The inflation backdrop won’t have been helped by the latest jump in oil prices, which hit their highest in more than three months on Tuesday and crude is now back positive year-on-year for the first time since October.
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