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The U.S. stock market swung through another unsettled day of trading on Wednesday, ahead of a huge couple of tests for Wall Street.
The S&P 500 added 0.4 per cent after veering between a small loss and a leap of 1.1 per cent earlier in the day.
That broke a four-day losing streak, the longest in nearly three months for the index, which has been shaking because of worries that stock prices have shot too high and that the U.S. Federal Reserve may not deliver as many revitalizing cuts to interest rates as expected.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 47 points, or 0.1 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.6 per cent.
Constellation Energy led the market and rallied 5.3 per cent after the U.S. Department of Energy said it's lending $1 billion US to help restart Constellation's nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island.
Lowe's rose four per cent after the home-improvement retailer reported a stronger profit for the summer than analysts expected.
They helped offset a 2.8 per cent drop for Target, which reported weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The retailer hinted that challenges may continue through the critical holiday shopping season.
Rival Walmart, meanwhile, was down 0.8 per cent.
Nvidia president and CEO Jensen Huang delivers a keynote address during a technology conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 28. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)The market's focus, though, remained on Nvidia.
Wall Street's most influential stock climbed 2.8 per cent as traders made their final moves ahead of the chip company's latest report, which arrived after trading finished for the day.
So much is riding on it.
Nvidia has grown to become the largest stock on Wall Street and briefly topped $5 trillion US in value. That means its movements carry more weight on the S&P 500 than any other stock, and it can single-handedly steer the index's direction some days.
One way Nvidia can quiet criticism that its stock shot too high, which has dragged its stock down by roughly 10 per cent from late last month, is to keep delivering bigger profits. That's because stock prices tend to track profits over the long term.
The stock market could be set up for more gains on Thursday, after Nvidia reported a stronger profit for its latest quarter than analysts expected.
"We've entered the virtuous cycle of AI," CEO Jensen Huang said. The company's forecast for roughly $65 billion US in revenue for the current quarter also topped analysts' expectations.
Nvidia has also become a bellwether for the broader frenzy around artificial intelligence technology, because other companies are using its chips to ramp up their AI efforts. And Alphabet, Palantir Technologies and other AI-linked stocks have been a major reason the U.S. stock market has set so many records this year, with the latest for the S&P 500 coming in late October.
Worries are rising, though, that all the investment may not produce as much profit and productivity for the overall economy as hoped.
Critics are suggesting AI's surge is similar to the bubble that enveloped dot-com stocks, which ultimately imploded in 2000 and dragged the S&P 500 down by nearly half.
Traders also made their final moves ahead of a jobs report coming from the U.S. government on Thursday.
It will show how many jobs employers created and destroyed in September, which earlier got delayed because of the U.S. federal government's shutdown. Even though the data may be stale, it could sway Wall Street because of how closely traders are paying attention to the job market's strength.
The job market has been slowing enough this year that the Fed has already cut its main interest rate twice. Lower rates can give a boost to the economy and to prices for investments, and the expectation on Wall Street had been for more cuts, including at the Fed's next meeting in December.