The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed roughly 122 points on Tuesday, a 0.23% decline that broke a three-day winning streak and set the tone for a cautious session across Wall Street ahead of Nvidia’s quarterly earnings report.
Nvidia, which now commands a market capitalization north of $5 trillion, has become something like the stock market’s mood ring.
What spooked the market
Two forces converged to push stocks lower. The first was macro: July’s PCE price index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, came in at 3.7%. That topped the 3.6% consensus forecast. The second force was pure anticipation. Nvidia was expected to report Q2 revenue of approximately $92 billion, representing a staggering 97% increase year-over-year. Earnings per share estimates hovered around $2.09.
Nvidia shares still slipped about 1% during intraday trading ahead of the announcement. This comes just one day after the stock had snapped a seven-day losing streak, closing up 2.2% on Monday.
