Stock Market Update

[BRIEFING.COM] The major averages trade in a steady range, with each index firmly holding on to gains wider than 1.0%. 

NVIDIA (NVDA 192.19, +5.67, +3.04%) is higher today after delivering a robust Q3 (Oct) beat-and-raise, easing concerns about a slowdown in AI infrastructure spending. Notably, the quarter showed strength despite negligible H20 sales and the company's Q4 (Jan) revenue guidance excludes all Data Center compute revenue from China—yet still came in far ahead of expectations.

Founder/CEO Jensen Huang was especially bullish on the call, saying Blackwell sales are "off the charts and cloud GPUs are sold out." He emphasized that compute demand across both training and inference continues to accelerate exponentially, adding that we've entered a "virtuous cycle of AI." The ecosystem is expanding rapidly, with more foundation model developers, more AI startups, and broader global adoption.

On the policy front, Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack (FOMC nonvoting member) told CNBC she still believes policy needs to be "somewhat restrictive."