Chip company Nvidia’s headquarters in Silicon Valley in February 2024.
Andrej Sokolow | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.
What you need to know today
Markets recovered from jitters
U.S. markets mostly closed higher on Tuesday after dipping in response to news of heightened geopolitical tensions. Shares of Super Micro Computer jumped 31%. On Wednesday, Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell even as Seven & I shares soared nearly 11% on news that the company’s founding family is planning to privatize it. Meanwhile, the CSI 300 ticked up after the People’s Bank of China kept its 1- and 5-year loan prime rates unchanged.
‘Industrial renaissance’ in the U.S.
An “industrial renaissance” is happening in the United States, said Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management. It’s fueled by government spending on infrastructure and the semiconductor industry, under the Inflation Reduction Act, according to Rowan. He said it has created an “incredible demand for capital,” which benefits firms in the finance industry.
Trump’s tariffs will slow growth, says Morgan Stanley
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed universal tariff of up to 20% — and as high as 100% on goods for China — will cause U.S. economic growth to “come down a great deal,” said Morgan Stanley’s global chief economist Seth Carpenter. Worse, there will be a “big negative shock” to the economy if all the tariffs are implemented at once, he added.
Japan’s exports rebound from years-long low
Japan’s exports in October rose 3.1% year on year, rebounding from September’s 1.7% drop which marked a 43-month low. October’s figure was higher than the 2.2% increase expected by a Reuters poll. Imports also rose more than forecast, causing Japan’s trade deficit to expand to 461.2 billion yen ($2.98 billion) from September’s revised figure of 294.1 billion yen.
[PRO] Rosy on Burberry
The luxury goods slump has hit Burberry hard, with its stock down around 40% year to date. After the company’s CEO Joshua Schulman announced sweeping plans to revamp the company, however, analysts and hedge fund managers are beginning to change their opinion of the company’s prospects.
The bottom line
Investors briefly sought refuge in safe haven assets like gold and bonds on increased geopolitical tensions: Russia reported that Ukraine had struck the country with U.S.-made missiles, and signaled it’s ready to respond with its nuclear arsenal.
“The conflict is escalating … I clearly expect to see some kind of immediate reaction, knee-jerk reaction,” Tiffany McGhee, CEO and CIO of Pivotal Advisors, told CNBC.
That evacuation into less risky assets was only temporary, however. Stocks fell briefly on the news, but most U.S. indexes recovered to close higher on Tuesday. The S&P 500 added 0.4% and the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.04%, though the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.28%.
It seems that once investors digested those geopolitical events, they decided other factors were more important to the markets. As McGhee pointed out, “This is year three of the conflict and while initially we saw spikes in prices … that’s kind of leveled off,” she said.
One of those factors is Nvidia’s earnings, out tomorrow. Anticipation for the report is so great that the chipmaker’s shares soared 4.9%.
Indeed, the options market is saying that Nvidia’s earnings will move the S&P more than U.S. jobs data, inflation readings or even Federal Reserve meetings, wrote Gonzalo Asis, equity-linked analyst at Bank of America Securities.
And investors won’t just be looking at Nvidia’s sales for the previous quarter. They’ll want to know if the chipmaker’s next-generation Blackwell chips can sustain – or even cement – Nvidia’s dominance in the artificial intelligence chip industry. Last month, CEO Jensen Huang described demand for Blackwell as “insane,” but worries bubbled up yesterday over a report that stated the chip tends to overheat in custom servers.
Past results aren’t an indication of future performance. That’s something every investor knows. Considering Nvidia’s performance over the past two years, however, it’s hard to think of any other asset that will give investors the same sense of safety.
— CNBC’s Ruxandra Iordache, Katrina Bishop, Brian Evans, Samantha Subin and Pia Singh contributed to this report.