Stock market today: Tech stocks rally after blowout Nvidia profit, while rest of Wall Street drifts

NEW YORK –

Technology stocks are jumping in early trading following a blowout profit report from Nvidia, but moves for the rest of Wall Street are more muted. The S&P 500 was 0.3% higher early Thursday, continuing a strong week that has trimmed its loss for August so far.

The Dow was little changed and the Nasdaq composite was leading the market with a 0.5% gain.

Nvidia was at the centre of the run after it reported much stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than expected. That raised hopes that this year’s frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology isn’t just hype. Nvidia rose 4.9%.

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THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

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Wall Street was mixed in premarket trading early Thursday after chipmaker Nvidia reported blowout earnings, pushing Nasdaq futures higher.

Futures for the S&P 500 gained 0.6% before the bell, the Nasdaq jumped 1.3%, while Dow futures lagged, inching back 0.1%.

That comes a day after Wall Street rallied to its best day since June as pressures from the bond market relaxed.

Nvidia shares jumped more than 8% in off-hours trading after the company’s results covering the May-July period exceeded its own projections for astronomical sales growth. That growth has been propelled by the company’s specialized chips that help power different forms of artificial intelligence, such as Open AI’s popular ChatGPT and Google’s Bard chatbots.

Nvidia’s second-quarter sales doubled from the same time last year to $13.51 billion, culminating in a profit of $6.2 billion, or $2.48 per share. That’s than nine times more than the company made a year ago, and the momentum is still building. The Santa Clara, California, company predicted revenue of $16 billion for the third quarter, nearly tripling results from the year-ago period. Analysts had expected $12.6 billion in revenue for that period.

Nvidia shares have more than tripled in price this year and are going for more than $506 each Thursday morning.

Boeing fell nearly 2% after fuselage supplier Spirit AeroSystems said it discovered a quality issue on certain models of the 737 fuselage. Spirit said it would continue to deliver the units to Boeing, which said there is no immediate safety concern associated with the issue.

Outside of corporate news, investors are awaiting news from this week’s conference of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Fed Chair Jerome Powell will give remarks on Friday.

The hope among traders has been that the Fed has already hiked rates for the final time this cycle and that it will begin cutting rates early next year. But such hopes have been diminishing with each stronger-than-expected report on the economy that’s come in recently.

At midday in Europe France’s CAC 40 added 0.4%, Germany’s DAX gained 0.3%, Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.7%.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 gained 0.9% to finish at 32,287.21. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 0.5% to 7,182.10.

South Korea’s Kospi jumped 1.3% to 2,537.68. The Bank of Korea’s Monetary Policy Board left the base rate unchanged at 3.50%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng surged 2.1% to 18,212.17, while the Shanghai Composite rose 0.1% to 3,082.24.

In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude gained 24 cents to $79.13 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, advanced 29 cents to $83.50 a barrel.

In currency trading, the U.S. dollar edged up to 145.56 yen from 144.79 yen. The euro slipped to $1.0850.

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Kageyama reported from Tokyo; Ott reported from Silver Spring, Maryland.