Jim Cramer’s daily rapid fire looks at stocks in the news outside the CNBC Investing Club portfolio. Bank of America : Piper Sandler upgraded the stock to neutral from underweight (hold from sell) and raised its price target to $42 per share from $37. “It’s becoming the Buffett bank,” Jim Cramer said Tuesday ahead of next week’s earnings. “You’re seeing a recognition that their bond portfolio wasn’t really a danger after all.” Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns a huge stake in BofA. RH : Stifel started coverage of the company formerly named Restoration Hardware with a buy and a $315-per-share price target. CEO Gary Friedman sees an inflection point. “I don’t want to bet against Gary,” Cramer said. “He’s bought a huge amount of stock.” Intel : The struggling chipmaker was trying to rally for the fifth session in a row. Cramer said he’s not a fan of the stock but “every dog has its day.” Netflix : Cowen increased its price target on the stock ahead of earnings next week. “There’s nothing new driving that damn stock,” Cramer said. “It doesn’t matter, though.” Smurfit Westrock : Stifel started coverage of the paper-based packaging company with a buy rating and a $65.70-per-share price target. “There’s been tremendous consolidation in that industry. And yet, it’s still not really been able to get rolling,” Cramer said.
In what was the most anticipated quarter this earnings season, Nvidia far outpaced lofty expectations on the top and bottom lines. Even better was a big revenue guide and a broader vision from CEO Jensen Huang that reinforced the notion that companies and countries are partnering with the AI chip powerhouse to shift $1 trillion worth of traditional data centers to accelerated computing. Revenue for its fiscal 2025 first quarter surged 262% year-over-year to $26.04 billion, well ahead of analysts’ forecasts of $24.65 billion, according to data provider LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv. The company had previously guided revenue to $24 billion, plus or minus 2% — so that was a huge beat. Adjusted earnings-per-share increased 461% to $6.12, exceeding the LSEG compiled consensus estimate of $5.59. Adjusted gross margin of 78.9% also beat the Street’s 77.2% estimate, according to market data platform FactSet. The company had guided gross margins to 77%. plus or minus 50 basis points. On top of the strong results, Nvidia announced a 10-for-1 stock split. Although stock splits don’t technically create value, they do tend to have a positive impact on the stock. The company said the split is to “make stock ownership more accessible to employees and investors.” We commend Nvidia for doing this and will continue to press other companies to do the same. Nvidia most recently split its stock in July 2021 on a 4-for-1 basis. In after-hours trading, it was little surprise to see Nvidia shares surging. Nvidia Why we own it : Nvidia’s high-performance graphic processing units (GPUs) are the key driver behind the AI revolution, powering the accelerated data centers being rapidly built around the world. But this is more than just a hardware story. Through its Nvidia AI Enterprise service, Nvidia is in the process of building out a potentially massive software business. Competitors : Advanced Micro Devices and Intel Most recent buy : Aug 31, 2022 Initiation : March 2019 Bottom line What air pocket? Coming into the quarter, it sounded like the only thing that could hold Nvidia back was a product transition-related slowdown from customers delaying orders of the H100 and H200 GPUs (graphics process units) in anticipation of the superior Blackwell chip platform. As you can see from Nvidia’s big beat and upside guide, that was far from the case and demand is expected to exceed supply for quite some time. Should this narrative form again, here’s a good thing to remember for next time so that these concerns don’t shake you out of a strong long-term thesis: Jensen explained on the post-earnings conference call that customers are still so early in their build-outs that they have to keep buying chips to keep up in the current technology arms race. And technology leadership is everything. “There’s going to be a whole bunch of chips coming at them and they just got to keep on building and just, if you will, performance average your way into it. So that’s the smart thing to do,” the CEO said. More broadly, we didn’t hear anything Wednesday evening to change our long-term view about how Nvidia is the driving force behind the current AI industrial revolution. Here’s how Jensen explained the shift that’s happening: “Longer term, we’re completely redesigning how computers work. And this is a platform shift. Of course, it’s been compared to other platform shifts in the past, but time will clearly tell that this is much, much more profound than previous platform shifts. And the reason for that is because the computer is no longer an instruction-driven only computer. It’s an intention understanding computer.” Jensen went on to mention how computers not only interact with us, “but it also understands our meaning, what we intend that we asked it to do, and it has the ability to reason, inference iteratively to process and plan and come back with a solution.” The billions and billions of dollars being spent on accelerated computing is why we own Nvidia for the long-haul and are not trying to trade it back and forth on every headline. By the way, another bearish narrative we often hear is that the custom chips all the big cloud companies are making are a threat to Nvidia’s leadership. Jensen doesn’t see it that way because his platform system has the highest performance at the lowest total cost of ownership. It’s an unbeatable value proposition. NVDA YTD mountain Nvidia YTD The strong results and outlook, upbeat commentary, and stock split were sending Nvidia shares roughly 6% higher to above $1,000 per share for the first time ever. However, we don’t think the gains end here. We’re increasing our price target to $1,200 from $1050 and maintaining our 2 rating , meaning we view it as a buy on pullbacks. Quarterly Results Growth was driven by all customer types, but enterprise and consumer internet companies led the way. Large cloud companies represented a mid-40% of data center revenue in the quarter, so when you see companies like Oracle and Club names Amazon , Microsoft and Alphabet raise their capital expenditure outlooks, understand that a lot of those dollars will flow Nvidia’s way. And, there’s a good reason for it. On the call, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress estimates that for every $1 spent on Nvidia AI Infrastructure, a cloud provider has an opportunity to earn $5 in GPU instant hosting revenue over four years. One customer call out in the quarter was Tesla , expanding its training AI cluster to 35,000 H100 GPUs (graphic processing units). Nvidia said Tesla’s use of Nvidia AI infrastructure “paved the way” for the “breakthrough performance” of full self-driving version 12. (Full self-driving, or FSD, is the way Tesla markets its high level of driver-assisted software.) Interestingly, Nvidia sees automotive as a huge vertical this year, a multi-billion revenue opportunity across on-premise and cloud consumption. Another highlight was Meta’s announcement of Llama 3, its large language model. It was trained on a cluster of 24,000 H100 GPUs. Kress believes that as more consumer internet customers use generative AI applications, Nvidia will see more growth opportunities. The Tesla and Meta clusters are examples of what Nvidia calls “AI Factories.” The company believes “these next-generation data centers host advanced full-stack accelerated computing platforms where the data comes in and intelligence comes out. Nvidia also pointed out that sovereign AI has been a big source of growth. The company defines sovereign AI as a “nation’s capabilities to produce artificial intelligence using its own infrastructure, data, workforce, and business networks.” Kress expects sovereign AI revenue to approach the high single-digit billions of dollars this year from nothing last year. Looking ahead, Nvidia sees supply for the H100 improving but is still constrained on the H200. Even with the transition to Blackwell, Nvidia expects demand for Hopper for quite some time. “Everybody is anxious to get their infrastructure online, and the reason for that is because they’re saving money and making money, and they would like to do that as soon as possible,” the company said. In other words, customers will take whatever they can get. But look for Blackwell revenue later this year, perhaps in a very meaningful amount. The company explained manufacturing of Blackwell has been in production and shipments are expected to start the fiscal 2025 second quarter, ramp in the third, and customers will have full data centers stood up in the fourth quarter. Software was mentioned more than two dozen times on the conference call. And taken together, Nvidia said on the prior quarter’s call that its software and services reached an annualized revenue rate of $1 billion. They are high-margin, recurring revenue businesses, which continue to be key watch areas in future quarters. As for China, the company said it started to ramp up new products specifically made for the region that don’t require an export control license. The U.S. government has put restrictions on sales of the fastest chips for fear they will be used by the Chinese military. However, it doesn’t like China is expected to be a driver of revenue like it was in the past because the limitations to Nvidia’s technology have made the environment more competitive. Guidance The company’s fiscal second quarter guide should dismiss the market’s concerns that some sort of AI spending “air pocket” was forming. For the current Q2, Nvidia projected revenue of $28 billion, plus or minus 2%, above consensus estimates of $26.6 billion Adjusted gross margins are expected to be 75.5%, plus or minus 50 basis points, above estimates of 75.2%. Capital returns Nvidia increased its quarterly dividend by 150%, which is nice but the annual yield is insignificant to the investment case. More impactful is the $7.7 billion of stock the company repurchased in fiscal Q1. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long NVDA. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., during the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California, US, on Tuesday, March 19, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
In what was the most anticipated quarter this earnings season, Nvidia far outpaced lofty expectations on the top and bottom lines. Even better was a big revenue guide and a broader vision from CEO Jensen Huang that reinforced the notion that companies and countries are partnering with the AI chip powerhouse to shift $1 trillion worth of traditional data centers to accelerated computing.
TAYLOR, Texas —The Commerce Department is on track to dole out all of the $39 billion in grant money allocated under the CHIPS Act by year-end, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told CNBC on Monday.
The Commerce Department is providing the money to semiconductor companies to incentivize them to build out manufacturing production capabilities in the U.S. The Biden administration announced earlier Monday that it would be providing Samsung with up to $6.4 billion in grants to expand two chip plants in central Texas — leaving roughly $16 billion left in subsidies to be distributed before the end of 2024.
“We’re on a roll. We’ve done three of these in the past month. We’ll be doing more in the coming weeks,” Raimondo said in an interview on the sidelines of Samsung’s award announcement event at its Taylor facility. “I expect all of the money in the CHIPS Act will be allocated by the end of this year.”
The award announcements so far have focused primarily on leading-edge chips, the most advanced type of semiconductors. Intel will receive up $8.5 billion in incentives to invest in projects in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and Oregon, while Taiwan Semiconductor is due to receive up to $6.6 billion in grants for projects in Arizona.
Now that the biggest grants have been doled out, future award packages will focus on memory chips and investments in suppliers, wafers, and chemicals, Raimondo said.
The Samsung award announced Monday will help the company create what officials call an “advanced manufacturing ecosystem” in central Texas, where multiple steps in the chip production process will all be done on a single campus. The Taylor facility will be twice as big as Samsung’s signature facility in South Korea, Raimondo said.
“It’s a little city of manufacturing, and around it will come suppliers,” she continued. “So when I say the whole ecosystem, it’s research and development, packaging, manufacturing, job training, and all of the upstream suppliers which will make America stronger and more secure.”
Chipmaking giant Nvidia entered “correction territory,” after shares briefly fell 10% from their most recent all-time closing high.
Shares had recovered by Wednesday’s close when they were only about 8% off the high.
The company, which makes graphics processing units — or GPUs — has been a key beneficiary of the artificial intelligence boom, which boosted demand for its chips.
Nvidia GPUs are commonly used for compute-intensive AI applications, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI chatbot. Its server chips are also a key component of data centers.
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang displays products onstage during the annual Nvidia GTC Conference at the SAP Center in San Jose, California, on March 18, 2024.
Josh Edelson | Afp | Getty Images
The company’s financial performance has been on a tear in the past year. It reported a 486% jump in non-GAAP earnings per diluted share in the December quarter, citing huge chip demand, thanks to the popularity of generative AI models.
The stock has come under pressure for the past two weeks, however. On Tuesday morning, shares were 10% from their last all-time closing high of $950 apiece, which they hit on March 25. The stock closed at a price of $853.54 on Tuesday, down 2% for the session.
Nvidia’s shares closed up 1.97% on Wednesday.
Nvidia’s share price performance in the past month
Definitions of what constitutes a market correction vary, but it is generally considered to be a sustained drop of 10% or more from all-time highs.
The exact reason for the downward move hasn’t been immediately clear. Investors could be taking profit on the stock, after a wild gain of more than 200% for the shares in the last 12 months. And on Tuesday, rival chipmaker Intelunveiled a new AI chip called Gaudi 3, aimed at powering large language models — the cornerstone technology behind generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Intel said the new chip is over twice as power-efficient as Nvidia’s H100 GPU — the U.S. chip giant’s most advanced graphics card — and can run AI models 1½ times faster than Nvidia’s GPU.
Analysts at D.A. Davidson said in a research note that they expect a “shrinking” of the size of AI models, including alternatives like Mistral’s Large model and Meta’s LLaMA system, to drive down demand for Nvidia’s stock over time.
“Although NVDA (Neutral-rated) should deliver a spectacular 2024 (and perhaps into 2025), we continue to believe recent trends set up a significant cyclical downturn by 2026,” D.A. Davidson analysts said in the note Tuesday.
“A combination of shrinking models, more steady growth in demand, maturing hyperscaler investments, and increased reliance by their largest customers on their own chips do not bode well for NVDA’s out years.”
Signage outside Intel headquarters in Santa Clara, California, Jan. 30, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Intel shares fell 7% on Wednesday after the company disclosed long-awaited financials in an SEC filing for its semiconductor manufacturing, or foundry, business, revealing an operating loss of $7 billion in 2023.
It was the first time Intel had reported revenue totals for its foundry arm alone, separating it from the products business, which reported $11.3 billion in operating income in 2023.
Intel said Tuesday that it expects its foundry losses to peak in 2024 and break even halfway between the current quarter and the end of 2030.
Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald, maintaining their neutral rating and $50 price target on the stock, lauded the company for its new financial reporting structure but wrote that Intel will need to drive its foundry and product operating margins higher.
“NOW is when the real work begins,” the analysts wrote in a Tuesday investor note. “Of course, this will take time, particularly with Intel’s planned manufacturing leadership truly ramping in 2027.”
Stifel analysts wrote that they continue to view Intel’s strategic plans positively in a note Tuesday while reiterating a hold rating and target price of $45 on the stock.
“With a multi-year execution cycle still ahead, we continue to prefer nearer-term AI beneficiaries, NVDA and AMD,” the analysts wrote.
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., March 5, 2024.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
LONDON — Global dividend payouts to shareholders hit a record $1.66 trillion in 2023, according to a new report by British asset manager Janus Henderson.
The Global Dividend Index report, published Wednesday, said payouts rose by 5% year-on-year on an underlying basis, with the fourth quarter showing a 7.2% rise from the previous three months.
The underlying figure adjusts for the impact of exchange rates, one-off special dividends and technical factors related to dividend calendars, along with changes to the index.
The banking sector contributed almost half of the world’s total dividend growth, delivering record payouts as high interest rates boosted lenders’ margins, the report found.
Last year, major banks including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley announced plans to raise their quarterly dividends after clearing the Federal Reserve’s annual stress test, which dictates how much capital banks can return to shareholders.
“In addition, lingering post-pandemic catch-up effects meant payouts were fully restored, most notably at HSBC,” Janus Henderson’s report added.
“Emerging market banks made a particularly strong contribution to the increase, though those in China did not participate in the banking-sector’s dividend boom.”
However, the positive impact from banking dividends was “almost entirely offset by cuts from the mining sector,” according to Janus Henderson.
The report noted that large dividend cuts by some major companies such as BHP, Petrobras, Rio Tinto, Intel and AT&T diluted the global underlying growth rate for the year by two percentage points, masking significant broad-based growth in many parts of the world.
A microchip and the Nvidia logo displayed on a phone screen are seen in this photo taken in Krakow, Poland, on April 10, 2023.
Nurphoto | Getty Images
Artificial intelligence and semiconductor chip stocks rallied after U.S. chip design firm Nvidiabeat Wall Street’s expectations for fourth-quarter earnings and revenue on Wednesday and projected “continued growth” in 2025 and beyond.
Nvidia supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company jumped as much as 2.05% in Thursday morning trade. TSMC is the world’s largest contract chip maker and produces advanced processors for companies like Nvidia and iPhone maker Apple.
Shares of server component supplier Super Micro Computer rose 11.42% in Wednesday’s after-hours trading. Dutch chip equipment manufacturer ASML, which supplies TSMC lithography machines critical to chip making, jumped 2.7% in the U.S. during after hours trading.
Following Nvidia’s earnings report, rivals Advanced Micro Devices and SoftBank-backed U.K. chip designer Arm Holdings surged 4.08% and 7.87%, respectively, in after hours trading.
Nvidia, which custom designs AI chips for the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google, saw skyrocketing demand for its graphics processing units thanks to the AI boom.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which gained massive popularity worldwide in November 2022 for its ability to generate human-like responses to user prompts, is trained and run on thousands of Nvidia’s GPUs. Nvidia shares rose 9% in extended trading.
South Korea’s memory chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix gained 0.41% and 3.22% respectively on Thursday. Large language models such as ChatGPT rely on high-performance memory chips to remember details from past conversations and user preferences in order to generate humanlike responses.
Other Taiwanese semiconductor firms Orient Semiconductor Electronics and MediaTek rose 2.94% and 1.53% respectively on Thursday.
Intel, Broadcom and Qualcomm, three U.S. chip makers, saw increases in share prices in extending trading Wednesday, surging 1.38%, 2.79% and 1.80% respectively.
“Fundamentally, the conditions are excellent for continued growth” in 2025 and beyond, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told analysts on Wednesday in an earnings call. He added that demand for Nvidia GPUs will remain high due to generative AI and an industry-wide shift away from central processors to the accelerators that Nvidia makes.
“If I was going to just kind of put a stake in the ground relative to the conversation, whether it’s related to market share or to their margins, I think they’re going to surprise people,” Gene Munster, managing partner of Deepwater Asset Management, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Thursday.
As Intel Corp.’s stock plunged to its biggest one-day drop in about three and a half years, analysts had some harsh words for the chip maker.
“How many times can you push the reset button?” Bernstein’s Stacy Rasgon asked in a note to clients.
While he thought many investors were bracing for the company to miss on its first-quarter forecast, the outlook came in “extremely weak and clearly worse than feared.” Intel INTC, -11.91%
expects $12.7 billion in revenue at the midpoint, while analysts had been looking for $14.3 billion.
“After yet another major reset this story probably just shifted to 2026 at the earliest for the bulls, and there is a lot of meat for the bears to sink their teeth into in the meantime,” Rasgon wrote, while sticking with his market-perform rating and $42 target price.
Baird’s Tristan Gerra highlighted challenges for Intel’s data-center and artificial-intelligence unit, which is “on track for a third consecutive year of revenue declines,” while his own revenue forecast implies a 14-year low.
Gaudi, the company’s accelerator chip for artificial-intelligence applications, “does not seem enough to lift [data-center] revenue, while gross margin will be impacted by higher depreciation inclusive of an expected U.S. Chip Act credit,” Gerra continued.
He also expressed some concerns about the company’s broader road ahead.
“Can top-line growth in future years be sufficient to fund continued node migration?” Gerra said. “Many hurdles remain, notably ramping units from this year’s small base (small baseline for Intel 4 makes it more challenging to yield at the next node), while [the Intel Foundry Service] revenue ramp entirely depends on future node execution including yield and performance.”
Gerra has a neutral rating and $40 target price on Intel’s stock.
Shares fell 11.9% in Friday trading, making for their worst single-day percentage decline since July 24, 2020, when they fell 16.2%, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Needham’s N. Quinn Bolton, meanwhile, downgraded the stock to hold from buy in the wake of Thursday afternoon’s report, calling the earnings reset “unexpected.”
“In addition to an overall worsening risk-reward, Intel’s core [data-center] business is challenged by a shift to accelerated computing architectures and direct competition from AMD and ARM,” he wrote. “We expect AI to remain the spending priority in the data center for the next several quarters. To that end, dollars will continue moving away from Intel’s core competency.”
Rosenblatt’s Hans Mosesmann took a similar view as he argued that Intel’s sales outlook is “contrary to the uber bullish messaging to the Street and is consistent with share losses to AMD, a lack of any perceivable AI growth vector that moves any dial, and points to another, yes another, transitional year.”
Artificial intelligence “seems like everywhere except at Intel,” he continued, noting that his stance on the stock “has not changed for many years.” Mosesmann continues to rate it at sell.
Raymond James analyst Srini Pajjuri, however, was more upbeat about Intel’s ability to capitalize on AI. “While Intel won’t likely get much credit for AI in the near term, we are encouraged by the growing pipeline for Gaudi accelerators ($2b+) and expect meaningful revenue contribution” in the second half of 2024, he wrote, while sticking with his outperform call but cutting his target price to $52 from $54.
The 2023 rally for stocks in the U.S. accelerated as more investors bought the idea that the Federal Reserve succeeded in its effort to bring inflation to heel.
The S&P 500 SPX
ended Friday with a 24.2% gain for 2023, following a 19.4% decline in 2022. (All price changes in this article exclude dividends). Among the 500 stocks, 65% were up for 2023. Below is a list of the year’s 20 best performers in the benchmark index.
This article focuses on large-cap stocks. MarketWatch Editor in Chief Mark DeCambre took a broader look at all U.S. stocks of companies with market capitalizations of at least $1 billion, to list 10 with gains ranging from 412% to 1,924%.
The Fed began raising short-term interest rates and pushing long-term rates higher in March 2022 by allowing its bond portfolio to run off. That explains the poor performance for stocks in 2022, as bonds and even bank accounts because more attractive to investors.
Investors are anticipating the return to a low-rate environment by scooping up 10-year U.S. Treasury notes BX:TMUBMUSD10Y,
whose yield ended the year at 3.88%, down from 4.84% on Oct. 27 — the day of the S&P 500’s low for the second half of 2023.
Before looking at the list of best-performing stocks of 2023, here’s a summary of how the 11 sectors of the S&P 500 performed, with the full index and three more broad indexes at the bottom:
A look at 2023 price action really needs to encompass what took place in 2022 for context. The broad indexes haven’t moved much from their levels at the end of 2022 (again, excluding dividends). We have included current forward price-to-earnings ratios along with those at the end of 2021 and 2022. These valuations have declined a bit, which may provide some comfort for investors wondering how likely it is for stocks to continue to rally in 2024.
Biggest price increases among the S&P 500
Here are the 20 stocks in the S&P 500 whose prices rose the most in 2023:
In November, CNBC visited Apple’s campus in Cupertino, California, to get a look inside one of the company’s many chip labs. CNBC also got a rare chance to talk with the senior vice president of hardware technologies, Johny Srouji, and Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, John Ternus, about the company’s push into the complex business of custom semiconductor development, which is also being pursued by Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Tesla.
Unlike traditional chipmakers such as Nvidia and Intel,Apple is not making silicon for other companies.
“Because we’re not really selling chips outside, we focus on the product,” Johny Srouji said. “That gives us freedom to optimize, and the scalable architecture lets us reuse pieces between different products.”
Watch the full interview to hear the executives speak about AI, its latest A17 Pro chip, working with manufacturing partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and more.
PARIS, ILE DE FRANCE, FRANCE – 2017/09/14: The Olympic Rings being placed in front of the Eiffel Tower in celebration of the French capital won the hosting right for the 2024 summer Olympic Games. (Photo by Nicolas Briquet/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Training of elite athletes dates as far back as the Ancient Olympic Games, when so-called gymnastes advised runners, chariot racers, wrestlers and boxers on technique, nutrition and strength conditioning.
Fast forward to today’s Olympians prepping for next summer’s Paris Games. Their trainers and coaches adhere to the same Olympic motto — faster, higher, stronger — yet have the added benefit of millennia of ever-advancing technology, which now has been super-charged with artificial intelligence.
Trainers and coaches at U.S. Soccer, one of the 47 National Governing Bodies overseen by the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, are using AI technology to instantaneously identify and track player movements and ball positions. A suite of software tools allows them to study a variety of human performance metrics, such as body position, velocity, speed and timing in real time on the field of play.
“Utilizing advances in AI and computer vision, we’ve been able to track and study personalized analytics from a variety of sports to determine the strengths and deficiencies in an athlete’s movement and help them make data-informed training and competition plans that can help them improve their performance, as well as their own health,” said Mike Levine, director of performance innovation business operations at the USOPC, based in Colorado Springs, also the home of a high-tech Olympic training center.
While the USOPC and NGBs employ in-house experts in bleeding-edge technology development, data analytics and sports sciences and medicine, big tech companies lend their AI know-how as well. USA Surfing staff, for instance, has teamed up with Microsoft engineers to figure out how best to ride waves. They take digital videos of surfers in action and use AI to analyze data on body movement, surfboards and waves to determine what they did well and what could be improved.
“This work saves coaches and staff hundreds of hours of video tagging, facilitates the accumulation of more and higher-quality data and affords analysts and coaches significantly more time to analyze the data and implement learnings into real-life training and performance,” Levine said.
Creating 3-D models of athletes’ bodies with Intel technology
These are manifestations of computer vision systems, which use AI technology to replicate the capabilities of the human brain responsible for object recognition and classification. A commercial application, called 3D Athlete Tracking (3DAT), was developed by Intel‘s Olympic Technology Group a few years ago and is now being utilized by trainers in numerous sports. 3DAT incorporates sensor-less motion capture and digital video to create three-dimensional models of an athlete’s entire body, from head to toes, which trainers use to tweak and improve performance.
“We’re able to see ways athletes move and detect things not possible with just the human eye,” said Jonathan Lee, who as senior director of sports technology at Intel helped develop 3DAT and is now chief product officer at London-based sports tech company ai.io, which recently acquired the system from Intel.
3DAT has been adopted by Exos, a coaching company in Scottsdale, Arizona, that trains college football players for the National Football League’s annual scouting combine, an evaluation ahead of the league’s yearly draft. “Exos uses 3DAT to analyze the 40-yard dash and help players get faster,” Lee said. Digital video cameras, mounted on timing gates incrementally positioned along the course, capture data on how a runner comes off the line, his acceleration and velocity, and his body’s angle of attack.
The data instantaneously constructs a personalized skeletal model of each player for immediate review. Before a player’s next sprint, a trainer might say, “You need to be more upright or lean forward, and give him tips on how to achieve that,” Lee said.
The NFL-Amazon digital player and concussion-risk tracking
The NFL itself is harnessing AI and computer vision to enhance its Digital Athlete program, developed in partnership with Amazon Web Services beginning in 2019. The Digital Athlete provides a complete view of each NFL players’ experience by analyzing data from his training and game activity, which is captured by sensors and tags in equipment and hours of video from cameras in stadiums. Computer vision and machine learning systems track speed, collisions, blocks and tackles. This data is shared with clubs and allows teams to precisely understand what players need to stay healthy, recover quickly and perform at their best.
“AI and machine learning are the backbone of the program,” said Jennifer Langton, NFL senior vice president of health and safety innovation. “We’re able to analyze a substantial amount of data and automatically generate insights into which players might benefit from altering either training or recovery routines, a process that used to be so manual and cumbersome.”
The AI was taught to identify trauma by repeated exposure to and digestion of digital video images of helmets from all angles, Langton said, and then to cross-reference visual information from statistical data to determine what player was wearing what helmet. “With enough practice, the AI becomes exponentially faster and more reliable than humans at accurately identifying and classifying head collisions throughout a game and the season,” she said, allowing trainers and coaches to see which players are due to reduce their workloads and which have room for a more intensive workout.
The Digital Athlete program was rolled out as a pilot with four NFL teams last year and this season is available to all 32 franchises via a dedicated online portal. “The portal provides teams with a daily training load and risk-mitigation information, as well as league-wide injury trends and benchmarks they hadn’t had before,” Langton said, adding that the NFL will assess the data at the end of the season to evaluate tangible results of the program.
‘The next big thing’: Twin hearts of elite athletes
Another AI-enabled technology that’s making its way into elite athlete training is the digital twin, a virtual replica of a physical object, process or system that can be used to simulate, predict and improve real-world scenarios. Tata Consultancy Services, headquartered in Mumbai, recently announced a partnership with French tech developer Dassault Systèmes to produce a digital twin heart, mimicking the flesh-and-blood one of Des Linden, a two-time Olympic marathoner and winner of the 2018 Boston Marathon (sponsored by TCS, along with the races in New York, Chicago and London).
Des Linden makes her way to the finish line during the 127th Boston Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts on April 17, 2023.
Joseph Prezioso | Afp | Getty Images
Linden’s avatar organ — created using AI-analyzed data from CT scans and MRIs — can simulate her heart rate, blood flow and oxygen levels, providing instant feedback that can be interpreted to adjust her training and competition. “We want to understand what is a safe zone for Des’ trainer to put her through,” said Dr. Srinivasan Jayaraman, a principal scientist at TCS. Instead of having her run on a treadmill or outdoors, “We can run simulations using her digital twin heart to vary different cardiovascular parameters and fine-tune her training.”
Linden is no stranger to sports tech, from online message boards back in her high school days for remotely comparing times with other runners to today’s state-of-the-art running shoes that world-class marathoners have broken records wearing. “The digital twin heart is going to be the next big thing,” she said. “Being able to map out [my training] and see the gains and drawbacks ahead of time will allow me to work smarter, not harder.”
That’s what Linden, aided by her digital twin heart, will be doing to train for the 2024 Olympic marathon trials in February. Qualifying for her third Team USA slot “will be a tough task,” said the 40-year-old runner, “but I’ll take a crack at it.”
AI and sports training diets
Although there’s no news yet of a digital twin of the human digestive system, AI is involved in planning Olympic athletes’ diet and nutrition. Alicia Glass, a senior sports dietician for the USOPC, designs meal plans for about 300 athletes with USA Track and Field and USA Swimming, a labor-intensive, hand-written task that’s been simplified with an AI-powered app called Notemeal. “They collected data from 37 dieticians from professional sports teams and organizations and used those data sets to generate individualized meal plans,” she said. “The value-add is that it’s a network of sports dieticians working with the best of the best athletes in the world.”
Glass still relies on her professional skills to understand the events each athlete competes in, their training regimens and goals, as well as their genetics, lean body mass and metabolic rate. Even athletes who train and compete in the same events require totally individualized meal plans, she said. “Notemeal makes that process a lot easier,” she said.
The athletes access Notemeal with a smartphone app. “I hit a toggle on my phone, and they get a text saying a meal has been created for you,” Glass said, adding that the app also applies AI to design personalized shopping lists and recipes.
Glass won’t claim that high-tech dietary planning will win medals next summer in Paris, but “many athletes would admit it helps improve their lifestyle because they’re more aware” of their personal fueling needs.
Linden says there is no turning back from the increasing role of technology in the lives of elite athletes. “Let’s just personalize the heck out of training and make sure we’re getting the maximum gains without setbacks from overworking,” she said.
The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve building during a renovation in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023.
Valerie Plesch | Bloomberg | Getty Images
This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our new, 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.
Downbeat Asian markets U.S. stocks ticked up Wednesday as another report showed inflation’s cooling. Despite that, Treasury yields rose. Asia-Pacific markets, however, fell Thursday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dropped 1.26%, dragged down by Xpeng’s 3.83% decline after the Chinese electric vehicle company reported disappointing earnings results.
‘Planet Earth is big enough’ U.S. President Joe Biden met Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference. Both leaders agreed to resume high-level military communications. As part of the agreement, senior U.S. military commanders will engage with their Chinese counterparts. As Xi said in his opening remarks, “Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed.”
Emptying Citi Citigroup will start laying off workers as part of CEO Jane Fraser’s corporate overall, CNBC has learned. Citi employees who will be let go will be informed starting Wednesday U.S. time, and the process will continue until early next week, according to people with knowledge of the situation. It seems no one will be spared: chiefs of staff, managing directors and lower-level employees will all be affected.
Microsoft’s own AI chip At its Ignite conference in Seattle, Microsoft announced two custom chips. The first, its Maia 100 artificial intelligence chip, could compete with Nvidia’s AI chips. The second, a Cobalt 100 Arm chip, is designed to tackle general computing tasks and could supplant Intel processors. But Microsoft is planning to use its chips internally, and doesn’t intend to let other companies buy those chips.
[PRO] Magnificent One Shares of the Magnificent Seven stocks — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla — have surged this year, propelling the S&P 500 higher. They’ve also drawn criticism that their prices are too high, based on their price-to-earnings ratio. But there’s an exception: Morgan Stanley thinks one of them is “pretty inexpensive relative to free cash flow growth or earnings growth.”
After a very encouraging consumer price index reading on Tuesday, we have more evidence that inflation’s truly cooling.
Wholesale prices in October, as measured by the producer price index, fell 0.5% for the month against the expected 0.1% increase. That’s the biggest decline in more than three years. When producer prices fall, it takes a while for those lower prices to seep into the general consumer economy, so it’s plausible we’ll see CPI continue dropping in the months ahead.
Major U.S. indexes rose — slightly — on that encouraging news. The S&P 500 increased 0.16% and the Nasdaq Composite edged up 0.07%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.47% for its fourth consecutive winning session.
The stock market rally over the past two days, it seems, was fueled by investors’ expectations that lower inflation readings will prompt the Federal Reserve to cut rates sooner rather than later. Investors think there’s a 29.6% chance the Fed will slash rates by a full percentage point by the end of next year, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
Investor optimism, ironically, may be counterproductive as well. Expectations of a rate cut forced down Treasury yields Tuesday (though they rose again yesterday). Treasury yields tend to serve as the benchmark for loans and other assets, so when they drop, financial conditions loosen — exactly what the Fed doesn’t want to see.
“Financial conditions have eased considerably as markets project the end of Fed rate hikes, perhaps not the perfect underpinning for a Fed that professes to keeping rates higher for longer,” said Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist at LPL Financial.
Indeed, “this is at least the 7th time in this cycle that markets [anticipate] … a potential dovish pivot,” wrote Deutsche Bank macro strategist Henry Allen. (Spoiler alert: Investors have, without exception, been disappointed the previous times as the Fed refused to budge.)
In short: While it’s undeniable inflation’s dropping, there’s no guarantee rates will fall in tandem. It might be better to be pleasantly surprised than to be disappointed.
Intel Corp. shares INTC, +2.80%
were up 2.8% in afternoon trading Friday and flirting with their highest close in more than 15 months, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The stock traded as high as $38.99 earlier in the session and recently changed hands at $38.86. A close above $38.86 and below $39.71 would make for the stock’s highest finish since July 28, 2022. Friday’s rally comes on a day of strength for chip stocks, with the PHLX Semiconductor Index SOX, +4.04%
up nearly 4%. Earlier Friday, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. TSM, +6.35%
posted a 34.8% sequential increase in revenue for the month of October in a positive signal for the sector.
U.S. stocks ended sharply higher Friday, more than shaking off weakness seen the previous session in the aftermath of a poor Treasury bond auction and fresh signs that interest rates may stay higher for longer.
Technology stocks drove the bounce, with the Nasdaq Composite leading major indexes to the upside as it and the S&P 500 logged their highest finishes since September.
What happened
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA
rose 391.16 points, or 1.2%, to close at 34,283.10.
The S&P 500 SPX
ended with a gain of 67.89 points, or 1.6%, at 4,415.24.
The Nasdaq Composite COMP
advanced 276.66 points, or 2%, to finish at 13,798.10.
The rally left the Dow with a weekly gain of 0.7%, while the S&P 500 advanced 1.3% and the Nasdaq booked a rise of 2.4%. The Dow saw its highest close since Sept. 20, while the S&P 500 ended at its highest since Sept. 19 and the Nasdaq at its highest since Sept. 14.
Meanwhile, the S&P 500 tested important chart resistance at the 4,400 to 4,415 level, which marks the confluence of previous resistance and the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement of the July-October drop, according to Matthew Weller, global head of research at Forex.com, in a note (see chart below).
Forex.com
“From a bigger picture perspective, bulls will need to see the index conclusively break above 4415 before declaring that the post-July streak of lower lows and lower highs is over,” Weller wrote.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite ended their longest winning streaks since November 2021 on Thursday, after a poorly-received $24 billion sale of 30-year Treasury bonds.
A calmer bond market may have helped set the tone for stocks. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond BX:TMUBMUSD30Y
fell 3.2 basis points to 4.733%, after it nearly notched its biggest one-day jump since June 2022. The yield still saw a weekly decline, its third straight.
It was unclear whether the Treasury auction had been affected by a reported ransomware attack against the U.S. unit of the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China that apparently disrupted the U.S. Treasury market.
Thursday’s setback was also tied to comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who told an International Monetary Fund panel on Thursday that the central bank was wary of “head fakes” from inflation, and the “2% goal was not assured.”
Much of Powell’s language was nearly identical to remarks he made on Nov. 1, when investors rallied stocks and bonds after the Fed chair didn’t explicitly commit to a further interest rate hike. But the subsequent rally for stocks after the Nov. 1 Fed meeting, with the S&P 500 jumping more than 6% over eight days, and a 50 basis point drop in the 10-year Treasury yield were “overdone and not governed by facts,” said Tom Essaye, founder of Sevens Report Research, in a note.
“Meanwhile, if we think about what the Fed said last week, namely that the rise in the 10-year yield was doing the Fed’s work for it and as a result they may not have to hike rates, then the short/sharp decline in the 10-year yield we’ve seen could essentially remove the reason for the Fed not having to hike rates — and that could put a rate hike back on the table!” he wrote. “That’s essentially what Powell reminded us of yesterday and that, along with the poor Treasury auction, pushed yields higher,” setting up pressure on stocks.
U.S. consumer sentiment fell in November for the fourth month in a row due to worries about higher interest rates as well as war in the Middle East. The preliminary reading of the sentiment survey declined to 60.4 from 63.8 in October, the University of Michigan said Friday. It’s the weakest reading since May.
Investors were also tuning into more comments by Fed officials Friday, including San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, who said she didn’t know if rates were high enough to bring inflation back down to the central bank’s 2% target.
Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. LGF.A, -0.66%
shares fell 0.7% after the TV, film and media giant reported a surprise second-quarter profit, and stuck with its full-year outlook “even with the negative impact of the strike” by Hollywood’s writers and actors earlier this year.
Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading. Intel — Shares of the chipmaker popped 9.6% Friday, a day after Intel reported third-quarter results that topped analysts’ expectations. Intel also gave strong guidance for the current quarter, and CEO Pat Gelsinger said the company plans to cut costs by about $3 billion this year. Dexcom — Shares of Dexcom, which distributes continuous glucose monitoring systems, soared 11.2% after the company posted stronger-than-expected quarterly results and raised its full-year revenue forecast. Stanley Black & Decker — Shares rallied more than 8% Friday after the industrial tool maker posted an earnings beat in the third quarter. The company also issued full-year earnings guidance between $1.10 and $1.40 per share, coming in higher than prior guidance of 70 cents to $1.30 per share and the consensus estimate. Meanwhile, revenue in the third quarter came in below expectations. Juniper Networks — The network management software provider climbed 6.2% after exceeding Wall Street’s expectations on earnings and revenue for the third quarter. Juniper earned 60 cents per share on an adjusted basis, while analysts surveyed by FactSet expected 55 cents per share. Revenue came out at $1.4 billion for the period, slightly surpassing the average analyst forecast of $1.39 billion. Deckers Outdoor — The footwear and apparel company climbed 19% Friday, a day after beating analysts’ expectations for the second fiscal quarter and raising full-year guidance. Bank of America reiterated its buy rating on the stock Friday, noting the company’s Ugg and Hoka brands are “firing on all cylinders.” Chipotle Mexican Grill — Chipotle shares led the market higher Friday, gaining 8% after the company’s third-quarter earnings topped expectations. The fast-food chain reported $11.36 in adjusted earnings per share, while analysts surveyed by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv, were expecting $10.55 per share. Chipotle also saw its year-over-year restaurant-level operating margin rise. Enphase Energy — The solar company’s stock dropped about 15% after reporting mixed third-quarter results and sharing a disappointing revenue forecast for the current period. Enphase Energy said it expects revenue between $300 million and $350 million for the quarter, versus the $584 million expected by analysts polled by LSEG. Amazon — Shares of the e-commerce giant continued into the green on Friday, surging 8% after reporting strong third-quarter results and showing a 13% jump in revenue for the period. Chevron — The energy stock dropped more than 5.6% to hit a 52-week low following a disappointing earnings report. Chevron’s earnings fell to $3.05 per share, excluding items, on $54.08 billion in revenue. While profits fell short of Wall Street’s expectations, revenue topped estimates. Ford Motor — Shares of the automobile maker plunged nearly 10% Friday. Ford reported results for the third quarter that fell short of Wall Street’s expectations, and the company pulled its previous guidance as it copes with the nearly six-week long UAW strike. Capital One — Capital One shares added 10.3% after the financial services company posted adjusted earnings of $4.45 per share, which topped expectations. — CNBC’s Alex Harring, Samantha Subin, Yun Li and Hakyung Kim contributed reporting.
Intel Corp. shares were popping nearly 8% in Thursday’s extended session after the chip maker delivered a rosy forecast, while talking up new customers for its foundry business and traction related to artificial intelligence.
For the fourth quarter, Intel INTC, -0.94%
anticipates $14.6 billion to $15.6 billion in revenue, whereas analysts were looking for $14.4 billion. The company is also modeling 44 cents in adjusted earnings per share, while the FactSet consensus was for 33 cents.
“While the industry has seen some wallet share shifts between CPU and accelerators over the last several quarters, as well as some inventory burn in the server market, we see signs of normalization as we enter Q4,” Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger said on the earnings call.
Gelsinger expressed confidence about Intel’s positioning — and the future of central processing units — as AI becomes more dominant in the technology world.
“Training of these large models is interesting, but the deployment of those models, the inferencing use of those models is what we believe is truly spectacular for the future,” he said. “And…some of that will run on the accelerators, but a huge amount of that is going to run, right, on Xeons.”
He also shared that Intel now has three customers for its 18A foundry process technology that have made commitments. The company previously disclosed one customer made prepayments, but Gelsinger added Thursday that Intel has two other customers.
“The other thing that we saw this quarter, which was a little bit unexpected, was this huge surge in interest for AI customers and Intel’s advanced packaging technology,” he said.
The company also delivered an upbeat third-quarter report, easily clearing Wall Street’s bar on profit and topping expectations on revenue as well.
The company reported net income of $297 million, or 7 cents a share, compared with $1.0 billion, or 25 cents a share, in the year-earlier period. On an adjusted basis, Intel earned 41 cents a share, down from 59 cents a share a year prior, while analysts were looking for 22 cents a share.
Revenue dropped to $14.2 billion from $15.3 billion, while the FactSet consensus called for $13.6 billion.
The company saw revenue from its personal-computer segment, known as client-computing, drop 3% to $7.9 billion, whereas analysts were looking for $7.3 billion. Data-center and AI revenue fell 10% to $3.8 billion, narrowly missing the FactSet consensus, which was $3.9 billion.
Intel recorded a 45.8% adjusted gross margin, compared with 39.8% in the second quarter. The company’s forecast had been for about 43%.
Intel shares have climbed 24% so far this year, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA
has lost about 1%.
This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our new, 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.
Markets attempt comeback The Nasdaq Composite snapped a four-day losing streak on Monday as Treasury yields retreated from their highs. Investors awaited the release of corporate earnings from tech giants including Alphabet and Microsoft. Asia-Pacific markets were higher in midday trading as investors assessed private surveys of business activity from Japan and Australia.
Another oil mega-merger Chevron on Monday said it agreed to buy Hessfor $53 billion in stock. It’s the second proposed mega merger among the biggest U.S. oil players after Exxon Mobil bid $60 billion for Pioneer Natural Resources earlier this month. The proposed deal also raises the competition between Chevron and Exxon to develop drilling in nascent producer Guyana.
Nvidia’s latest blow to Intel Nvidia is working on building personal computer chips which would use technology from Arm Holdings, Reuters reported on Monday. The plans mean the chipmaker would challenge Intel in its longtime stronghold of personal computers. Advanced Micro Devices also reportedly plans to make chips for PCs with Arm technology.
Bitcoin breaches $34,000 to highest since May 2022 The price of bitcoin breached the $34,000 level to hit its highest since May last year, bolstered by positive sentiment about a bitcoin exchange-traded fund. The world’s largest cryptocurrency was trading 4.97% higher at $34,596.40 on Tuesday, according to data from Coin Metrics.
[PRO] Portfolio manager namesthenew growth stocks Markets may be facing an “unusual amount” of uncertainty, but there still are very good opportunities right, according to one portfolio manager, who tells CNBC Pro about three new growth areas he likes: obesity drugs, reshoring and artificial intelligence.
Markets had an eventful start to the week, with just enough optimism ahead of Big Tech earnings reports to help the Nasdaq close higher for the first time in five sessions. Deal making was also at play on Monday as Chevron bet big on buying Hess to compete with larger rival Exxon Mobil.
Stocks have been feeling the pressure from multiyear highs in Treasury yields and worries about how that stands to affect the American economy. Some analysts think the benchmark 10-year yield could still have further room to run.
The rapid rise in yields “should accelerate an already weakening economic picture that is masked by higher rates,” said Canaccord Genuity chief market strategist Tony Dwyer.
Microsoft, which is slated to report earnings after the close Tuesday, is seen by UBS as a potential hedge against a recession next year. Unlike more focused software companies, Microsoft “has full geographic coverage across all industry verticals,” UBS analyst Karl Keirstead said, and that makes Microsoft less susceptible to downturns in any one sector or region. Alphabet is also set to report quarterly results Tuesday afternoon.
Wall Street analysts also made fresh calls on what is quickly becoming one of this year’s hottest segments in pharmaceuticals – weight loss drugs.
Most analysts predict the sales of weight loss drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro could easily exceed $100 billion. Citi most recently raised its sales estimates for such drugs to $71 billion by 2035, up from its prior estimate of $55 billion. Still, that’s conservative compared to Guggenheim’s expectations of $150 billion to $200 billion in sales.
Europe’s most valuable publicly listed company, Novo Nordisk makes Wegovy, which is also sold under the brand name Ozempic. U.S. drugmaker Eli Lilly makes Mounjaro.
Investors were also closely watching the crypto industry as bitcoin touched its highest level in over a year on Tuesday, on hopes of a bitcoin exchange-traded fund. A bitcoin ETF would give investors a way to gain exposure to bitcoin’s price movements without owning the volatile cryptocurrency directly.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on April 26, 2023 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our new, 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.
Markets attempt comeback The Nasdaq Composite snapped a four-day losing streak on Monday as Treasury yields retreated from their highs. Investors awaited the release of corporate earnings from tech giants including Alphabet and Microsoft. Europe’s Stoxx 600 index ended slightly lower amid geopolitical uncertainty and ahead of the European Central Bank’s monetary policy decision later this week.
Another oil mega-merger Chevron on Monday said it agreed to buy Hessfor $53 billion in stock. It’s the second proposed mega merger among the biggest U.S. oil players after Exxon Mobil bid $60 billion for Pioneer Natural Resources earlier this month. The proposed deal also raises the competition between Chevron and Exxon to develop drilling in nascent producer Guyana.
Nvidia’s latest blow to Intel Nvidia is working on building personal computer chips which would use technology from Arm Holdings, Reuters reported on Monday. The plans mean the chipmaker would challenge Intel in its longtime stronghold of personal computers. Advanced Micro Devices also reportedly plans to make chips for PCs with Arm technology.
Tesla discloses DOJ probes Tesla disclosed that the U.S. Department of Justice has been investigating, and in some cases issued subpoenas, to Elon Musk’s automaker. In a third-quarter financial filing out Monday, Tesla said the department is looking into its driver assistance systems marketed as Autopilot and Full Self-Driving, or FSD, options; the range of the company’s electric vehicles; as well as “personal benefits, related parties,” and “personnel decisions” at the company.
[PRO] Goldman’s guide to 5% 10-year yield Bond yields have been surging lately as the Federal Reserve signaled higher rates for longer in its inflation fight. The benchmark 10-year rate briefly topped the key 5% threshold Monday. Investors should focus on stocks with strong balance sheets as these companies tend to be more resilient against high interest rates, according to Goldman Sachs.
Markets had an eventful start to the week, with just enough optimism ahead of Big Tech earnings reports to help the Nasdaq close higher for the first time in five sessions. Deal making was also at play on Monday as Chevron bet big on buying Hess to compete with larger rival Exxon Mobil.
Stocks have been feeling the pressure from multiyear highs in Treasury yields and worries about how that stands to affect the American economy. Some analysts think the benchmark 10-year yield could still have further room to run.
The rapid rise in yields “should accelerate an already weakening economic picture that is masked by higher rates,” said Canaccord Genuity chief market strategist Tony Dwyer.
Microsoft, which is slated to report earnings after the close Tuesday, is seen by UBS as a potential hedge against a recession next year. Unlike more focused software companies, Microsoft “has full geographic coverage across all industry verticals,” UBS analyst Karl Keirstead said, and that makes Microsoft less susceptible to downturns in any one sector or region. Alphabet is also set to report quarterly results Tuesday afternoon.
Wall Street analysts also made fresh calls on what is quickly becoming one of this year’s hottest segments in pharmaceuticals – weight loss drugs.
Most analysts predict the sales of weight loss drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro could easily exceed $100 billion. Citi most recently raised its sales estimates for such drugs to $71 billion by 2035, up from its prior estimate of $55 billion. Still, that’s conservative compared to Guggenheim’s expectations of $150 billion to $200 billion in sales.
Europe’s most valuable publicly listed company, Novo Nordisk makes Wegovy, which is also sold under the brand name Ozempic. U.S. drugmaker Eli Lilly makes Mounjaro.
An exterior view of the NVIDIA headquarters in Santa Clara, California, May 30, 2023.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Intel stock dropped more than 3% during trading on Monday after Reuters reported that Nvidia and AMD were working on Arm-based PC chips. Arm stock rose more than 6%, and Nvidia gained nearly 4% during late-day trading on Monday.
Intel currently has the majority of the market for PC chips, with AMD coming in second. Sales of PC chips comprised over half of Intel’s revenue in the June quarter.
Intel’s PC chips are based on the x86 instruction set. Chips that use the Arm-based instruction set, like those for smartphones, often use significantly less power, which is critical for battery-powered devices.
Apple recently transitioned its laptop and PC chips from Intel to home-grown Arm processors, which led to a short-term boom in sales and longer battery life for the devices.
Nvidia could release a PC chip based on Arm as soon as 2025, according to Reuters. AMD’s Arm chip is also in planning, according to the report. These chips would be used in PCs running Microsoft Windows.
Switching software from the x86 instruction set to be compatible with an Arm-based processor can be time-consuming and difficult, but Windows can already easily run on an Arm chip.
Qualcomm has been working on its own Arm-based PC chips for years, although they have yet to gain significant sales traction. It has a launch event planned for later this week.
Last month, Arm went through an initial public offering, where it emphasized to investors that it has long-term agreements with top chipmakers to use its technology in their chips.
Intel, ARM, and AMD did not immediately return requests for comment.
