Wall Street inched higher in early trading Wednesday as markets turned their attention away from President Donald Trump's State of the Union speech and toward the latest earnings report from AI chipmaker Nvidia.
Futures for the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each rose 0.3% before the opening bell, while Nasdaq futures climbed 0.5%.
In his speech Tuesday night, Trump focused on jobs, manufacturing and an economy he says is stronger than many Americans believe. He didn't dwell on efforts to lower the cost of living — despite polling showing that his handling of the economy and kitchen-table issues has increasingly become a liability.
Investors are closely watching for an earnings report due later in the day from chipmaking giant Nvidia. The quarterly report is likely to sway a jittery stock market as investors weigh whether the massive bets riding on technology's latest craze will pay off.
As has been the case since Nvidia’s chipsets emerged as AI’s best building blocks, the expectations are sky-high for the results covering the company’s fiscal quarter, covering November through January.
In early equities trading Wednesday, First Solar shares slumped 16.5% after it fell short of fourth-quarter profit expectations and issued tepid sales guidance for 2026.
Cava jumped 11% in premarket trading after the fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant chain beat Wall Street's sales and profit targets and gave a strong forecast for the current year. Higher prices and a surprising increase in same-store sales boosted the company's latest results.
In Europe at midday, France's CAC 40 and Germany's DAX each added 0.4% while Britain's FTSE 100 jumped 0.9%.
Japan's benchmark briefly hit a record high as investors were cheered by an overnight Wall Street rally driven by optimism about the artificial-intelligence boom. Tokyo's Nikkei 225 surged 2.2% to finish at 58,583.12.
Shares also rose in China. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.7% to 26,765.72, while the Shanghai Composite added 0.7% to 4,147.23. South Korea's Kospi surged 1.9% to 6,083.86, as the benchmark continued to benefit from the global demand for computer chips.
In Taiwan, the Taiex jumped 2.1% as shares in TSMC, the world's largest contract manufacturer of computer chips, surged 2.5%. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 jumped 1.2% to 9,128.30.
In energy trading early Wednesday, benchmark U.S. crude oil added 58 cents to $66.21 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 71 cents to $71.29 a barrel.
The U.S. dollar recovered to 156.76 Japanese yen from 155.91 yen. The euro cost $1.1786, up from $1.1774.
Gold ticked up less than 1% while silver rose 3.1% to more than $90 per ounce.
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Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama
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