A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets from Mike Dolan
Tuesday’s geopolitical angst faded fast in world markets as positioning ahead of today’s results from AI-giant Nvidia saw Big Tech lead a Wall Street rebound – one that futures look to have sustained overnight.
After months of basically ignoring the Ukraine conflict, world markets suddenly got the jitters yesterday after Ukraine made use of its new freedom to use U.S.-supplied missiles on Russian territory and Moscow responded with nuclear threats.
But with so much of the conflict now in flux as Donald Trump’s new administration prepares to take the helm in Washington in January, investors were wary of over-interpreting daily events there for now or chasing ‘safety trades’ too far.
Reinforcing the point on Wednesday, the Kremlin seems keen to position itself for some sort of Trump-brokered settlement – even though it rules out making any territorial concessions and insists Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO.
The upshot in markets over the past 24 hours has been to return the focus to the two other obsessions of the week – the Nvidia earnings update after the bell today and speculation about who gets the nod to take over the Treasury next year.
The rebound in U.S. stocks on Tuesday was aided by a 3% advance in WalMart to a record closing high after the retailer raised its annual sales and profit forecasts for the third consecutive time – with some aggravating inflation signals also embedded in some of its pricing readouts.
But earnings from the $3.6 trillion-valued Nvidia will likely steal the show later and its stock surged almost 5% on Tuesday ahead of the release.
Options traders are primed for a nearly $300-billion swing in its market value following the chipmaker’s results on Wednesday. Nvidia options implied an 8.5% swing in either direction – in line with previous percentage results-day moves but now amplified by sheer scale of market cap in what’s now the world’s most highly-valued company.
Encouraging the renewed tech fizz, Super Micro Computer jumped more than 30% on Tuesday after the artificial intelligence server maker named BDO USA as its auditor and said it has submitted a plan to the Nasdaq to avoid delisting.
All of which saw megacap tech outperform yesterday, even though the wider market was less enthused and the equal-weighted S&P500 actually ended in the red.
Combining the tech excitement and a post-election crypto surge on Trump-related de-regulation hopes, Bitcoin resumed its climb and topped $94,000 for the first time overnight. The latest spur was a report that Trump’s social media company was in talks to buy crypto trading firm Bakkt.
In fixed income, Treasuries also gave back their brief safety bid overnight too – with a 20-year bond auction due later in the day.
Even though housing starts numbers showed some softness on Tuesday, benchmark 10-year yields reclaimed all of the day’s losses and climbed back above 4.4%.
Speculation about who gets the nod as Treasury Secretary remains intense, with one of those tipped – Cantor Fitzgerald boss Howard Lutnick – now out of the running as he was nominated for the Commerce Department role instead.
Former Federal Reserve governor Kevin Warsh remains the favorite in betting markets, but some reports said Apollo chief executive Marc Rowan is still being considered.
Elsewhere, the rebound in stocks and Treasury yields pushed the dollar higher across the board – but stock markets in Asia and Europe also advanced on Wednesday, even China’s tariff-wary equity indexes.
Sterling and gilt yields pushed higher after a slightly hotter-than-forecast British inflation reading for last month, with the headline consumer price inflation rate jumping as high as 2.3% and above the Bank of England’s target again.
Although skewed by shifts in regulated energy prices, the news is likely to reinforce the BoE’s cautious stance on further interest rate cuts and money markets now don’t see another quarter-point rate cut until March.
Curiously, Fed futures also don’t fully price another U.S. rate cut until March – although there’s slightly more than a 50% chance it pulls the trigger again next month.
The Japanese yen, meantime, also gave up its ‘safety bid’ from Tuesday – even after robust October export data.
Japan’s exports expanded faster than expected last month, led by a pick-up in chip equipment demand in China that may nod to some hurried trade activity before Trump takes office and potentially kicks off a fresh tariff war.
Key developments that should provide more direction to U.S. markets later on Wednesday:
* US corporate earnings: Nvidia, Palo Alto Networks, Target, TJX
* Federal Reserve Board Governors Michelle Bowman and Lisa Cook and Boston Fed President Susan Collins all speak, Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr testifies in the House; European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, ECB Vice President Luis de Guindos and Irish central bank chief Gabriel Makhlouf all speak; Bank of England policymaker Dave Ramsden speaks
* US Treasury sells $16 billion of 20-year bonds
(By Mike Dolan,; mike.dolan@thomsonreuters.com; Editing by Toby Chopra)
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