Midday Market Brief: The Nasdaq Touches a New High

Hello, and welcome to the inaugural edition of The Daily Upside’s Midday Market Brief.

The idea here is simple: a quick but comprehensive snapshot of the day’s market somewhere close to the halfway point of the trading session. We don’t quite have a motto yet, but it’d be something close to “Here’s everything you need to know about today’s stock market packaged in something you can read in 60 to 90 seconds.” Yes, we’re still working on it.

Naturally, we chose a sleepy Tuesday after a three-day weekend to get started. But while the market began the short week heading sideways, that tends to matter less when the stock market is mostly carried by 10 stocks. And look at this: the Nasdaq hit an all-time high crossing the 17,000 mark earlier this morning. (It was recently still above that level and up about 0.5% on the day.)

As for economic data, the week is somewhat backloaded, with the most-anticipated nugget coming on Friday with the personal consumption expenditures index, one of the Fed’s favorite gauges for judging the inflation fight. However, we did get an increase in the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index on Tuesday, its first rise after three months of declines. The upshot is that when consumers feel confident, they keep spending, and we all get to keep dreaming of our best-case “soft landing.”

Movers & Shakers

Here are some of the stocks making news today: 

• Nvidia, one of those 10 stocks that matter, was up 5.6% on Tuesday as the AI hype cycle shows no signs of slowing down. Investors seemed enthusiastic that the news of Elon Musk’s xAI raising $6 billion would mean big business for Nvidia’s market-leading AI semiconductors.
• Gamestop shares jumped 27.6%, continuing their recent revival as one of the market’s top meme stocks. The company saw a perfect opportunity to supply the demand, raising $933 million in an at-the-market stock offering.
• Apple shares continued their recent climb, up 0.8% on Tuesday, following a Bloomberg report that its smartphone shipments jumped 52% in China, thanks to retailer discounts. Whatever it takes!
• DraftKings was down 11.3% on reports that the company may purchase micro-betting platform Simplebet. The move would allow DraftKings to juice its sports-betting portfolio with more in-game opportunities. We can neither confirm nor deny any bets placed on Vincent Trochek to score tonight’s first goal for the New York Rangers.