The stock market rebounded Monday from the Oct. 10 sell-off after President Donald Trump calmed China trade fears, with the major indexes then largely moving sideways, with big intraday swings. The Russell 2000 surged to record highs, but tumbled Thursday as regional banks plunged on bad loan concerns. Banking giants such as JPMorgan Chase Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo had strong results. Oracle released a big deal with AMD and raised long-term growth forecasts, but gave up weekly gains. Nvidia is making a fresh networking push while Broadcom unveiled a new AI chip.
Stock Market Rises, Then Whipsaws
The stock market jumped Monday as President Trump cooled trade war rhetoric after slamming stocks on Oct. 10. After that, the major indexes saw big intraday swings. The small-cap Russell 2000 surged to new highs, but pared weekly gains as regional banks sold off on credit fears. Meanwhile, big bank earnings and AI chip news were generally positive. The 10-year Treasury yield briefly undercut 4%.
Chip Stocks Diverge On Earnings
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing beat third-quarter estimates with a 49% EPS gain while sales swelled 37%, boosted by AI data center chips. The foundry giant, also known as TSMC, also guided higher for Q4 revenue. Taiwan Semi, which makes chips for Nvidia, Broadcom, Advanced Micro Devices and more, hit a new high but reversed lower. Meanwhile, chip-gear giant ASML beat Q3 EPS views with an 11% gain but sales slightly missed with a 7% advance. ASML rose on a a rosy outlook for Q4 and 2026.
Networking Chips In Focus
Broadcom said it set a new benchmark for performance in AI scale-out networking for data centers with Thor Ultra, the industry's first 800G AI Ethernet network interface card. Thor Ultra supports data speeds of 800 gigabits per second and is designed for large-scale artificial intelligence data centers with over 100,000 AI processors. Technology for scale-up networks has emerged as a major battlefront with Nvidia's NVLink, UALink and Ethernet for Scale-Up Networking (ESUN) vying for leadership. Meanwhile, Nvidia announced that Meta Platforms and Oracle will use Nvidia's Spectrum-X Ethernet networking devices in their AI data centers. AVGO stock jumped while Nvidia edged lower. Astera Labs dived amid pressure from Nvidia and Broadcom.
Oracle Announces Deals, Bullish Outlook
Oracle executives offered a bullish outlook during an analyst day event and said its cloud business had inked new AI-focused deals with a list of clients that includes Meta Platforms. The tech giant forecast above-consensus 31% average annual revenue growth through fiscal 2030, with AI server rental margins improving dramatically. The analyst day event closed out Oracle's AI World conference, which saw several announcements from the database giant. That includes a major AI chip deal with AMD. Shares fell solidly on Friday, perhaps on priced-in expectations for strong guidance, erasing weekly gains.
Bank Giants Beat
Money center and investment banks cleared Q3 views, driven by growth in dealmaking and consumer and investment banking. JPMorgan Chase Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Citigroup kicked off results Tuesday with earnings and revenue beats, followed by Morgan Stanley and Bank of America on Wednesday. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon noted that the U.S. economy "generally remained resilient," but there were some signs of softening from uncertainty around geopolitical conditions, tariffs, and trade deals, while asset prices remain elevated amid the risk of "sticky" inflation. Goldman Sachs saw a $98 price target increase from Argus on its results, with a $65 increase from Citi on its results. Big bank stocks were generally higher as of Wednesday, with Wells Fargo and BofA jumping past buy points. But WFC stock and BAC shares both jumped in buy zones during the week. However, banking giants sold off on Thursday amid concerns about bad loans lurking at regional banks, with JPMorgan and Goldman falling back below 50-day lines.
Regional Banks Dive On Loan Concerns
Zions Bancorp and Western Alliance disclosed bad loans, slamming regional banks on Thursday. Investors have been on edge about lenders broadly, following recent bankruptcies by auto parts maker First Brands and auto lender Tricolor. Investment bank Jefferies continued to dive on its First Brands exposure. But regional banks steadied somewhat Friday as auto lender Ally Financial and some superregionals beat views.
BlackRock Tops Views, Make Big AI Deal
BlackRock rallied after the asset manager reported a fractional EOS gain with revenue up 25% to $6.51 billion, both beating Q3 views. Assets under management rose 17% to a record $13.46 trillion, with iShares ETFs' AUM swelling to $5 trillion. Net inflows were $204.64 billion. On Wednesday, a BlackRock-led consortium said it's acquiring Aligned Data Centers from Macquarie Asset Management in a deal valued at $40 billion. It is the largest data-center deal to date. Shares broke out, but fell back to the buy point as financials slumped.
Online Brokers Beat Views
Charles Schwab and Interactive Brokers both beat third-quarter estimates. Schwab earnings increased 70% while revenue jumped 27%, driven by "strengthening organic growth trends, increasing adoption of wealth solutions, and favorable macroeconomic tailwinds," according to CEO Rick Wurster. Asset management fee revenue rose 13%, while trading revenue jumped 25%. Charles Schwab added $137.5 billion in core net new assets, with total client assets at $11.59 trillion. Interactive Brokers delivered a 42.5% EPS gain on 21% revenue growth. The broker reported a 23% increase in commission revenue, driven by higher trading volumes and customer account growth. Schwab stock rose for the week but hit resistance at the 50-day line. Interactive Brokers briefly tumbled to the 50-day line but rebounded to hold a buy point.
Salesforce Issues Dreamy Forecast
Salesforce hosted an investor day during its Dreamforce conference and projected 10% organic subscription revenue growth through fiscal 2030 with a revenue target of $60 billion. By fiscal 2030, Salesforce said, it expects operating margin for its cloud-based software to improve to 40% from 34% in fiscal 2026. Aiming to boost the adoption of artificial intelligence products by enterprise customers, Salesforce at Dreamforce leaned into the 2021 acquisition of Slack Technologies. At Dreamforce, Salesforce unveiled the Agentforce 360 platform, an AI-based update on the preexisting Customer 360 platform, which unifies all Salesforce apps and company data. Also, Salesforce is giving customers several options for paying for agentic technology.
Transport Giants Beat Views
Trucker J.B. Hunt Transport Services and railroad stock CSX kicked off Dow Jones Transportation Index results with better-than-expected third-quarter earnings. While investors look to the group for economic indicators, J.B. Hunt's earnings beat was driven primarily by structural cost cutting and productivity gains. J.B. Hunt executives also said that demand remains below normal. Meanwhile, CSX said its slight sales decline came as "the effects of lower export coal prices and a decline in merchandise volume were partially offset by increases in other revenue, higher pricing in merchandise and intermodal volume growth." The railroad company also reported Thursday that volumes grew 1% year over year and 2% sequentially, to 1.61 million units in Q3. J.B. Hunt stock skyrocketed after a long downtrend. CSX stock rose above a buy point.
Health Giants Mixed
Johnson & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories reported third-quarter earnings last week. J&J beat expectations with EPS growth up 16% and sales growing 7% to nearly $24 billion. Abbott EPS and sales both rose 7%, but the $11.37 billion in revenue slightly missed. Johnson & Johnson announced plans to spin off its orthopedics business into a new company called DePuy Synthes. J&J raised its sales outlook for the year, but kept its earnings view. Abbott narrowed its full-year EPS target, cutting the midpoint by a penny.
Stock Market News In Brief
Palantir Technologies and Snowflake on Thursday said they would partner to help companies modernize data for building and deploying artificial intelligence applications. Palantir stock and shares in Snowflake initially rose, then reversed down.
Bloom Energy announced Monday that Brookfield Asset Management will invest up to $5 billion to deploy Bloom fuel cells at AI data centers. The companies are collaborating on the design and delivery of AI factories globally, including a site in Europe that they say will be announced before year-end.
American Express earnings topped views early Friday. The Dow Jones credit card giant lifted full-year targets, but only raised its EPS outlook to in line with consensus despite the Q3 beat.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise issued fiscal 2026 targets below Wall Street expectations amid slowing growth in its networking business. The maker of computer servers, networking equipment and data storage systems guided low on earnings. HPE projected revenue growth of 5%-10%, down from a projected 15% in the October-ending fiscal 2025. Shares tumbled.
