What drove gains at Home Depot in the past quarter? And what made investors nervous about Nvidia’s latest results? Host Francesca Fontana discusses the biggest stock moves of the week and the news that drove them. Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the biggest stock moves of the week?
Hey, listeners. It's Saturday, March 1st. I'm Francesca Fontana for The Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News in Markets, our look at the biggest stock moves of the week and the news that drove them. Let's get to it. To refresh our memories, stocks logged gains for January and a strong start to 2025.
Chapter 2: How did inflation and AI fears impact February's market?
But trade drama, continued inflation, and AI competition fears did not do us any favors in February.
Chapter 3: Why did NVIDIA's positive results lead to a sell-off?
Chapter 4: What was the outcome of Trump's meeting with Zelensky on the stock market?
This week, for instance, NVIDIA's positive results still managed to cause a sell-off, and we had more tariff threats from President Trump and retaliation threats from China, not to mention the tense meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, after which stocks wobbled before they recovered late Friday afternoon.
All in all, the three major indexes ended the week mixed, and for the month of February, the S&P 500 and the Dow each fell about 1.5%, while the Nasdaq dropped nearly 4%. We got some fresh earnings reports this week, including from Home Depot, the home improvement giant. Even the less handy among us certainly know the orange logo.
Chapter 5: How did Home Depot perform in the latest earnings report?
Home Depot delivered a better-than-expected quarter, beating Wall Street's expectations for quarterly sales and profit, and the company said it's increasing its quarterly dividend to $2.30 a share.
Home Depot said that demand was strong for things like appliances, building materials, and lumber, but weaker for projects like kitchen and bathroom remodels, you know, the kind of big purchases that a lot of us might typically use financing for, like a credit card or a personal loan.
And the company sees higher interest rates continuing to strain people's wallets when it comes to big-ticket purchases. And, as a result, it offered cautious guidance. Home Depot shares rallied 2.8% on Tuesday and notched a weekly gain of 2.9%. We also got positive quarterly results this week from Home Depot rival Lowe's, with the blue logo, not orange, and its shares rose too.
Now let's circle back to NVIDIA, the poster child of the AI boom. Like I mentioned, NVIDIA also delivered some solid earnings, but investors weren't so ready to celebrate. After the market closed Wednesday, NVIDIA posted sharply rising sales and profit in its latest quarter, and the company said it brought in $11 billion of revenue from its new Blackwell artificial intelligence chips.
The results showed that spending on NVIDIA's chips is continuing to soar, despite all the jitters about the outlook for the AI boom that have been moving through the stock market. You may recall that in January, the threat of competition to U.S. dominance from Chinese AI developer DeepSeek rattled investors.
Analysts blame the stock's fall on narrower profit margins and worry about NVIDIA's sales in China. NVIDIA shares dropped 8.5% on Thursday and on a weekly basis lost about 7.2%. And now you know what's news in markets this week. You can read about more stocks that moved on the week's news in The Score, my column in the Wall Street Journal's Exchange section.
Today's show was produced by Zoe Kolkin and Anthony Bansi with supervising producer Talia Arbel. I'm Francesca Fontana. Have a great weekend. And don't forget, you can email me your thoughts on the market at francesca.fontana at wsj.com. I'll see you next Saturday.
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