Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq rise as stocks pause sell-off streak before Nvidia earnings

Stocks closed mostly higher on Wednesday as Wall Street recovered some ground from its recent tech-led sell-off.

The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) led the way on a recovery, climbing 0.6%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) notched a 0.4% rise. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI), which includes fewer tech names, ended the day up 0.1% after spending the day largely flat.

Wednesday’s movement notched a recovery for the stock market after a four-day streak of mostly losses. In the moments before its earnings release, Nvidia closed Wednesday’s trading session up around 2.8%. Fellow Magnificent Seven names Meta (META) and Microsoft (MSFT) continued their losing streaks, however, closing the day down around 1.2% and 1.3%.

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) also resumed its sell-off, dropping below $90,000 and nearing its lowest levels since April.

Nvidia’s third quarter earnings took pole position as the strongest focus item for investors on Wednesday. The chipmaker’s results could prove a make-or-break moment for this year’s strong S&P 500 rally, which has been spurred by optimism for AI-fueled growth.

Payments platform Block, Inc. (XYZ) expects profits to grow in the “mid-teens” range each year through 2028 as the company looks to scale up its product offering, Block announced at an investor day on Wednesday.

Block, led by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, sees operating profits growing by 30% annually to $4.6 billion in 2028, and expects earnings per share to grow by a similar amount annually to $5.50 in 2028. Block shares were trading up by more than 8% in late-afternoon trading on Wednesday following the announcement.

Block’s flagship products are the money transfer software Cash App and the merchant payments platform Square, competing with similar products in PayPal’s (PYPL) Venmo and the not-yet-public Stripe (STRI.PVT).

“We’re moving faster with greater scale and efficiency, driving product velocity across Square and Cash App to serve more customers and help them participate in the modern economy,” said Amrita Ahuja, Block’s COO and CFO.

The company will look to redouble efforts on growing those two main products while also working to expand its suite of offerings, Ahuja told Bloomberg.

Shares in Block are down by around 28% since the beginning of the year. The company took another hit when it released third quarter earnings that fell short of analyst estimates on both revenue and EPS, losing 8% in the trading session after the results were released.

Prices on crude oil fell by more than 2% on Wednesday after data from the Energy Information Administration showed a larger-than-expected drawdown of US reserves.

Futures on Brent crude (BZ=F), the international benchmark, fell by around 2.3% to trade below $64 per barrel, while futures on the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude (CL=F) fell by a similar margin to trade around $59.30.

EIA data showed a weekly decrease of 3.4 million barrels in US commercial crude oil inventories. Oil analysts had been expecting a draw of only half that size, at 1.7 million barrels for the week, according to Bloomberg estimates.

Gasoline inventories built by 2.3 million barrels from last week, according to EIA data, far overshooting analyst predictions of 50,000 barrels’ worth of growth. Diesel fuel stocks grew by 200,000 barrels from the prior week, moving against analyst estimates of a 1.14 million-barrel draw.

Oil prices have been trending downward throughout the year as the market has begun to accept and price in an increasingly widespread view that oil is headed for a major oversupply glut in 2026 as OPEC+ continues to produce barrels while demand dips.

In a pair of notes published earlier this week, analysts at Goldman Sachs predicted that crude oil prices will rise through the back half of the 2020s, while natural gas (NG=F) prices will fall.

The forward curve on WTI futures contracts has spent much of the past year in backwardation, implying a looser market to come and matching with expectations of a 2026 glut. But as of Tuesday, the curve is “threatening contango,” or market conditions implying an increase in prices and a tighter market in the future, said Robert Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho Securities USA.

Tech stocks saw the biggest outflows of any sector last week, according to data from Bank of America, marking the fourth consecutive week of net outflows.

The tech sector has been subject to a series of market jitters over the past couple of weeks as fears of overextension and an AI bubble have put pressure on the biggest names in the group. Upcoming earnings from Nvidia (NVDA), seen as a harbinger of sector performance, have also had investors wary.

“Nvidia earnings are effectively a quarterly pulse check for the AI trade,” said Jake Behan, head of capital markets at Direxion. “If demand stays strong, it steadies the broader tech complex. If guidance softens, it can send shockwaves through the broader AI ecosystem.”

Nvidia shares were up nearly 2% in early afternoon trading on Wednesday, but are down 4.6% over the past five trading sessions amid a recent tech stock sell-off. Options trading implies Nvidia shares could rise or fall 6.9% following the AI chipmaker’s earnings report on Wednesday after the bell, according to Bloomberg data.

Selling among US clients, BofA analysts said, was largely driven by single-stock outflows, while equity ETFs recorded their fifth week in a row of net inflows. Tech ETFs saw net inflows last week, despite the sector’s dominant single-stock outflows.

Only healthcare and energy managed to notch single-stock inflows last week, with all other sectors joining tech on outflows. Consumer staples and real estate saw the biggest outflows after tech, according to BofA.

Ahead of Nvidia’s earnings report, the AI chipmaker’s quarterly 13F filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission last week offers a glimpse into the most valuable company on Earth’s biggest holdings.

Nvidia’s largest investment stakes in public companies are in “neocloud” firm CoreWeave (CRWV) and AI infrastructure provider Applied Digital (APLD). Nvidia also has big stakes in British chip designer Arm (ARM) and another neocloud called Nebius (NBIS).

CoreWeave is by far Nvidia’s largest holding. The chipmaker held 24 million shares worth $3.3 billion as of Nov. 14. Nvidia’s second largest investment is in Applied Digital — the chipmaker owns 7.7 million shares worth $177 million in the data center firm.

DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria told Yahoo Finance that Nvidia’s relationship with CoreWeave is an “egregious” example of how the biggest AI players have become increasingly entangled through a web of circular investments that have spurred bubble fears on Wall Street.

CoreWeave is one of Nvidia’s biggest customers and has been first to bring its Blackwell AI systems to market. The neocloud has also used its store of Nvidia chips as collateral for big loans, and that debt finances further purchases of Nvidia’s chips.

Making things more complicated, Nvidia is a customer of CoreWeave and recently committed to purchasing up to $6.3 billion worth of computing capacity from CoreWeave if it is unable to sell that capacity to its other customers.

“While we have a very strong relationship with Nvidia, we get no preferential access and we’re not exclusive to them,” CoreWeave told Yahoo Finance.

Meanwhile, Nvidia is upping its game in the private investment world, with $23.7 billion worth of VC investments in AI firms through 59 deals between the start of 2025 and Monday, according to Pitchbook data.

Read more about Nvidia’s investments here.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will not publish its monthly “Employment Situation” report for October, citing the agency’s inability to adequately collect data during the government shutdown, the agency said on Wednesday.

“Household survey data from the Current Population Survey could not be collected for the October 2025 reference period due to a lapse in appropriations,” the BLS said.

The BLS also announced that its November jobs report, originally scheduled for release on Dec. 5, will now be published on Dec. 16 and will contain what October data the agency was able to collect.

The monthly “Employment Situation” jobs reports are a crucial and widely watched data release that gives the market an overview of the health of the labor market throughout the US. The Federal Reserve also leans on the jobs report for key input on its interest rate policy decisions.

The August jobs report, the last released before the start of the government shutdown, showed the unemployment rate at 4.3%. The September jobs report, which was also delayed due to the shutdown, is scheduled to be released on Thursday.

Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) shares rose 3.5% midday Wednesday, putting the stock on track to close above its previous record high of $291.74 last week.

The stock also broke above $300 to hit an intraday record of $304.25 earlier in the trading session.

The move comes after Google released its latest Gemini AI model, Gemini 3, on Tuesday to rave reviews.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis called the launch a “big step on the path toward AGI,” or artificial general intelligence.

Wall Street analysts have viewed the release of Gemini 3 as a key development in Alphabet’s ability to monetize its investments in AI. The positive reception thus far is a good sign for the tech giant.

Even tech critic Gary Marcus contended in a blog post that Gemini 3 is by “most measures better than any other model out there.”

Still, he tempered enthusiasm: “It’s great model, as far as LLMs go, topping most benchmarks, but it’s certainly not AGI,” he said.

Yahoo Finance’s Emma Ockerman reports:

Read more here.

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) fell below $90,000 Wednesday as the cryptocurrency shed nearly 4% in midday trading.

The move comes after investors pulled around $523 million from BlackRock’s flagship iShares Bitcoin Trust Tuesday, Reuters reported. Options trading implies Bitcoin could sink further to $80,000.

The cryptocurrency initially dropped below $90,000 on Tuesday for the first time since April, but quickly recovered.

Other cryptocurrencies and crypto stocks also suffered on Wednesday, deepening a recent selloff. Ethereum (ETH-USD) and XRP (XRP-USD) both sank roughly 6.6%, and Solana (SOL-USD) shed 5.5%.

Strategy (MSTR), the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, fell nearly 9%, while Coinbase (COIN) dropped 4.5%. Stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL) was also down 9%.

Options trading implies Nvidia (NVDA) shares could rise or fall 6.9% following the AI chipmaker’s earnings report on Wednesday after the bell, according to Bloomberg data.

On average, shares have risen or fallen 3.9% after Nvidia’s past earnings reports, per Bloomberg.

Nvidia shares were up nearly 3% in late morning trading on Wednesday but are down 4% over the past five trading sessions amid a recent tech stock selloff fueled in part by investor fears of an AI bubble.

“NVDA near-term is facing the tough task of meeting high (earnings) expectations AND high skepticism around AI capex, likely only resolved when broader market volatility (shutdown, interest-rates) subsides,” wrote Bank of America (BAC) analyst Vivek Arya in a note to investors Nov. 14.

Blue Owl Capital (OWL) — the asset manager whose splashy $27 billion deal with Meta (META) will help the tech giant develop a massive AI data center in Louisiana — saw shares of its publicly traded fund, OBDC (OBDC), rise nearly 3% Wednesday.

The move comes after Blue Owl reportedly canceled a merger between OBDC and its non-traded fund OBDC II. OBDC II investors would have lost money from the deal because they were restricted from redeeming shares until it closed, and OBDC has been trading at a discount — the publicly traded fund is down 20% for the year and 4% in the past month alone.

Blue Owl Capital has made headlines recently for its role in the AI buildout.

Investors have grown concerned over the emergence of off-balance sheet financing for AI projects through arrangements such as Meta’s and Blue Owl’s joint venture. In other words, Meta gets to use debt tied to Blue Owl through their venture to fund its Louisiana data center without that debt sitting on its balance sheet and weighing on earnings.

Stocks were stable at the market open Wednesday ahead of a key earnings report from AI chip giant Nvidia (NVDA) but quickly picked up steam.

The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) edged up more than 0.1%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) was roughly flat. But the two gauges accelerated about five minutes after the start of the trading session to add 0.8% and 0.4%, respectively.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI), which includes fewer tech stocks, traded flat.

The market action comes after another day of sharp losses for stocks on Tuesday.

Lowe’s (LOW) stock jumped more than 5% in premarket trading on Wednesday after beating Wall Street estimates on profit due to a pickup in online sales and growth in demand from professional contractors.

Bloomberg News reports:

Read more here.

Discount retailer Target’s (TGT) stock fell 2% before the bell on Wednesday after the company slashed its full-year profit guidance and provided a cautious outlook for the holiday season, as cash-strapped consumers struggle with the affordability crisis for food, healthcare, and housing.

Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sozzi reports on the latest from the US retail giant:

Read more here.