Technology earnings carried Wall Street higher on Thursday, with the S&P 500 adding roughly 0.4% and the Nasdaq Composite climbing about 1% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average hovered near the flat line. The rally arrived on the eve of Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh's first Jackson Hole address, leaving investors holding two conflicting stories: an AI capital-spending cycle still accelerating, and a central bank that has not ruled out raising rates.
Nvidia Delivers, and the Buildout Gets Longer
Nvidia shares jumped 6% after Wednesday afternoon's fiscal second-quarter report, which extended the company's streak of beats to five straight quarters. Total revenue reached $92.2 billion, above management's guided midpoint of $91.0 billion, while Data Center revenue came in at $89.02 billion — up 117% from a year earlier as hyperscale customers ramped deployments of the Blackwell Ultra architecture.
The forward numbers did more work than the backward ones. Management guided third-quarter revenue to roughly $108 billion while assuming zero China compute revenue, and disclosed supply commitments that have swelled to $279 billion, much of it memory tied to the coming Vera Rubin platform. For investors who spent August debating whether AI capital expenditure had peaked, that figure reframed the question: a large share of the buildout is already contractually locked in.
Salesforce Surges 18% on Raised Guidance
Salesforce was the session's standout, closing up 18.5%. The software company reported second-quarter revenue of $11.35 billion against a consensus estimate of $11.32 billion, raised its full-year outlook, and announced an expanded partnership with Anthropic. CrowdStrike and Okta also advanced on their own results, broadening the move beyond semiconductors and into enterprise software — a rotation bulls have been waiting on for months.
Labor Market Holds, Growth Slows
The economic data offered little resistance. Initial jobless claims for the week ending August 22 fell 4,000 to 203,000, according to the Labor Department, though the four-week moving average edged up 1,250 to 205,500. The picture remains one of very few layoffs paired with very little hiring.
Growth is the softer half of the story. The Bureau of Economic Analysis left its second-quarter GDP estimate unchanged at a 1.5% annual rate in its second reading, down from 2.1% in the first quarter. Consumer spending was revised up to a 3.4% annualized pace from 3.2%, but that improvement was partly offset by higher imports.
Bonds and Metals Wait for Warsh
Treasury yields eased into the symposium, with the 10-year note at 4.645% and the 30-year bond at 5.161%, each down about two basis points. Precious metals were mixed: gold spot traded near $4,584.96 an ounce Thursday morning, below Wednesday's $4,614.31, while December futures held around $4,650. Silver rose 1.82% to roughly $69.34.
Warsh speaks Friday at 10:00 a.m. Eastern with the federal funds rate at 3.50%–3.75% and inflation running near 3.4%. The July 29 decision to hold drew dissents from Cleveland's Beth Hammack, Minneapolis' Neel Kashkari and Dallas' Lorie Logan, all of whom favored a hike — the first three-way split since 2016. Markets currently price roughly one-in-three odds of a September increase.
Sources: Yahoo Finance, CNBC, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Labor, Investing.com, Bloomberg