Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) at the opening bell in New York on February 25, 2026.
Timothy A. Clary | Afp | Getty Images
U.S. equities rose on Wednesday, supported by Nvidia and Oracle, as stocks look to build on the gains from the prior trading day.
The S&P 500 added 0.9%, and the Nasdaq Composite traded up 1.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 287 points, or 0.6%.
Nvidia was up 2.2% ahead of its earnings report, which is scheduled to be released after the bell along with results from software giant Salesforce and Snowflake. Nvidia’s report comes at a time when investors are recalibrating lofty tech stock valuations and growing skeptical on hyperscalers’ high AI capital expenditures.
“Whether such market confidence can be sustained in the coming days will partly depend on NVIDIA’s earnings,” wrote Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, chief investment officer for the Americas and global head of equities at UBS, in a note. “With hyperscalers having announced another step-up in capex in recent weeks, markets expect the chipmaker to forecast revenue above consensus estimates alongside strong sales growth.”
Michael Rosen, chief investment officer at Angeles Investment Advisors, cautions that investors shouldn’t bet against CEO Jensen Huang, saying that he’s “played his cards extremely well.” He also views the recent run the stock has had — it’s currently pacing for a fourth consecutive day of gains — as an opportunity for some profit-taking among those on Wall Street.
Fellow artificial intelligence player Oracle jumped 3%, leading the continued bounce in software stocks, after the name was upgraded at Oppenheimer, which sees a “favorable” risk-reward profile in the wake of its recent pullback.
The software sector extended its run from the previous session, when the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) rose 2%. The fund climbed another 2% on Wednesday, as stocks such as Palantir Technologies and Microsoft gained. That’s even as Workday recorded losses after the company issued a soft revenue forecast.
Rosen believes that the worries that have plagued investors surrounding software and AI are “a bit overblown.”
“The market is, I think, moving from just throw everything into one category and make it go up to being a little bit more discerning as to which companies might be better positioned than others,” he said. He also said that he believes the “sell-first, ask-questions-later” market is in the “ask-questions-later” phase where “things maybe are not quite so scary.”
On Tuesday, the major stock averages advanced as fears about AI disruption across several industries dissipated. Software and cybersecurity stocks saw a relief rally after Anthropic launched a new connectors and plugins for its knowledge worker tool, Claude Cowork, that will allow companies to connect the AI tool to their existing apps such as Google Drive.
Separately, investors this week are keeping an eye on tensions between the U.S. and Iran. Over the past weekend, President Donald Trump had threatened to hike global tariffs to 15%, but a 10% duty on global imports was implemented on Tuesday.
The president gave his State of the Union address Tuesday evening, where he talked up the state of the economy. He also announced a proposal to offer workers access to a government-backed retirement account and once again called for banning large institutional investors from buying single-family homes.