Muted Market Reaction to Nvidia Earnings

Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Thursday, Feb. 27.

State of Play

Stocks meandered around yesterday in anticipation of Nvidia (NVDA 0.00%↑) earnings. These were positive but as of 0650 have yet to make much of an impact on broader sentiment. That may be due to the latest tariff news:

• Stock index futures are moving higher, but not with the force one normally sees after positive Nvidia earnings. Indeed NVDA itself is now up only 1% in the pre-market. Nasdaq and S&P 500 are +0.7%;

• Cryptos are dropping a bit. Bitcoin is down 2% to trade below $87,000. Another sign of not much risk appetite;

• Commodities are moving higher, though this appears to be tariff-related. Copper is up another 0.7% with WTI crude oil up 1% to trade around $69.50/barrel;

• Bonds are dropping. The 10-year yield is up 6 basis points to 4.31%. Not sure what that’s about. Maybe simple profit taking as the bond market has rallied over the last week or so.

Today’s Known Events

We start once again with earnings:

• Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCLH 0.00%↑) earnings just printed and these appear to have impressed investors as the stock is moving higher in the pre-market, by ~3% at the time of this writing;

• Papa John’s (PZZA 0.00%↑), J.M. Smucker (SJM 0.00%↑), and Macerich (MAC 0.00%↑) the mall REIT are among economically-sensitive companies reporting before the open at 0930;

• After the close at 1600 we’ll hear from Dell (DELL 0.00%↑), Soundhound AI (SOUN 0.00%↑), and mortgage company Rocket Co. (RKT 0.00%↑), among others.

Some economic data as well:

• It’s Thursday so we’ll get initial jobless claims at 0830. Economists who were surveyed expect 220k new claims, effectively unchanged from the 219k recorded last week and ahead of the four-week average of 215k.

• At the same time as initial jobless claims we’ll get a second reading of fourth-quarter GDP but that can safely be ignored as it will likely just confirm what was in the first reading.

(The market’s initial positive reaction to NVDA earnings has since faded, confusingly)