CoreWeave’s beat spurs Wall Street higher

US tech stocks rallied, with chipmaker Nvidia snapping its two-day slide, after neocloud firm CoreWeave surged on its strong revenue and order book, firming up optimism about the artificial intelligence trade.

Wall Street’s bond markets were closed for the Veterans Day public holiday, while the greenback was broadly stronger as traders predict the Federal Reserve will hike the federal funds rate next month.

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth fended off impeachment as the House of Representatives blocked the motion from advancing to a committee, while oil prices rose on reports that Iran was unwilling to give up nuclear materials.

And Australian futures are pointing to a soft start to the day for the resources-heavy ASX as gold futures threaten to dip below US$4,000 an ounce, while Mainfreight’s first-half result on this side of the Tasman may take heart from Hapag-Lloyd’s upgraded guidance.

It’s in the weave

AI cloud provider CoreWeave surged 26% after reporting stronger revenue than analysts predicted, and helped revive optimism about the surging demand for the sector.

Tech stocks drove Wall Street higher, with the Nasdaq Composite up 2.1% and the S&P 500 gaining 1.5%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose a more modest 0.4%. Nvidia led gains on the Dow, climbing 4.5% and snapping the two-day slide that followed the chipmaker’s board launched an investigation into chief executive Jensen Huang amid reports he was the target of Chinese spying.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported Anthropic’s initial public offering was already oversubscribed as the Claude developer seeks to raise as much as US$90.4 billion through the IPO and a private placement.

Separately, Bloomberg reported China’s ByteDance, which developed TikTok, was planning to release an AI assistant in the coming weeks that was similar to Meta Platforms’ Muse.

The kiwi dollar fell to 55.64 US cents at 7am in Auckland from 56.06 cents yesterday against a broadly stronger greenback amid heightened expectations for a rate hike next month as several Fed officials said the faster pace of price increases than expected this week kept inflation firmly in focus for the central bank.

“Hawkish comments from Federal Reserve officials have raised the prospect of a 50-basis-point increase in December, although a quarter-point hike remains the more widely anticipated outcome,” Moomoo market strategy consultant Greg Boland said in a note.

A firm grip

Brent crude oil futures rose 1.4% to US$92.78 a barrel at 7am as Iran’s secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, said the Islamic Republic wouldn’t let any nuclear material leave its borders cooled optimism for an end to the Middle East conflict.

Meanwhile, the US House of Representatives blocked a motion to impeach Hegseth from going to a committee. The Democratic majority takes over the House in January.

European stock markets were also stronger with the UK’s FTSE 100 up 0.8%, Germany’s DAX gaining 1.2% and France’s CAC 40 advancing 0.7%.

Germany’s Siemens Energy jumped 11% after the company said it expected margins to swell in the coming years amid the AI boom driving demand, while Hapag-Lloyd advanced after it raised its earnings guidance, with freight rates remaining elevated.

Australian futures are pointing to a 0.5% decline for the S&P/ASX 200 index when trading opens across the Tasman. Gold futures slipped 0.7% to US$4,004/ounce at 7am.

Accounting software developer Xero is due to report its first-half earnings across the Tasman, while Reserve Bank of Australia monetary policy board member Marnie Baker is scheduled to deliver a speech.

Mainfreight is due to report its first-half result in New Zealand, and Fonterra Cooperative Group holds its annual meeting in Mystery Creek today.

On the data radar, Statistics New Zealand’s travel and migration figures for September and electronic card spending for October are due today.

Reporting by Paul McBeth. Image from Domaintechnik on Unsplash.