Stock Market News Review: SPY, QQQ Power Past Canceled October Jobs Report as Nvidia Shatters Earnings Expectations
The S&P 500 ETF (SPY) and the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) closed Wednesday’s trading session in the green and are trading higher in the after-hours following Nvidia’s (NVDA) earnings report. NVDA is the largest component in both ETFs, with a 7.96% weight in SPY and a 9.88% weight in QQQ.
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The semiconductor leader reported revenue growth of 62.5% year-over-year to $57 billion and an adjusted EPS of $1.30. Wall Street was expecting revenue of $54.9 billion and an adjusted EPS of $1.25. In addition, Nvidia guided for fourth-quarter revenue of $65 billion at the midpoint, beating the consensus analyst estimate of $62 billion.
“Blackwell sales are off the charts, and cloud GPUs are sold out,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. “Compute demand keeps accelerating and compounding across training and inference — each growing exponentially.”
The odds of a 25 bps rate cut at the December 9-10 Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting continued to fall after the Fed’s October minutes showed that several officials were in favor of keeping rates steady through year-end. “Many participants suggested that, under their economic outlooks, it would likely be appropriate to keep the target range unchanged for the rest of the year,” read the minutes. Furthermore, Fed officials were divided on the decision to cut rates in October given concerns about inflation.
Speaking from the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum, President Trump urged Fed Chair Jerome Powell to cut rates and called him “grossly incompetent.” Trump also said that Powell “should be sued for spending $4 billion to build a little building,” a reference to the Fed’s billion-dollar renovation of its Washington, D.C., headquarters.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said that October’s jobs report, which includes nonfarm payrolls and the unemployment rate, would never be published due to a lapse in data collection caused by the government shutdown. The BLS will publish November’s jobs report on December 16, although that comes after the Fed interest rate decision, leaving the central bank without crucial labor market data to guide its decision.
In other news, the U.S. trade deficit contracted by 23.8% month-over-month to $59.6 billion in August as the effects of Trump’s tariffs continued to curb imports. Imports fell by 5.1% to $340.4 billion, the largest drop in four months, while exports increased by 0.1% to $280.8 billion. During the month, the U.S. ran a $15.4 billion trade surplus with China, while its deficit with Switzerland shrank by $7.6 billion to $0.1 billion.
The S&P 500 (SPX) closed with a 0.07% gain, while the Nasdaq 100 (NDX) returned 0.32%.
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