Key Stories from the past week: Nvidia Chips and Nvidia Dip

The market darling Nvidia was once again front of mind for investors this week and at almost 7% weighting of the S&P500, who are we to argue? More on their share price dip and earnings release below as well as other relevant results from PDD Holdings and CrowdStrike. The US dollar bounced after strong economic data raised questions on the magnitude of upcoming rate cuts. USDJPY was our top traded FX pair for the week, while gold takes the cake for Futures. Rate cut expectations are supporting Gold as it tests all-time highs, with ETF inflows also adding to upward pressure.

Nvidia Earnings
Nvidia reported a reasonable set of results beating expectations on most metrics. Despite that, the share price dipped 6% on Thursday highlighting how investors have become too accustomed to exceptional beats. This company’s importance is undeniable with by far our most actively traded equity instrument this week with an almost 2:1 skew to buying. The new Blackwell chip looks set to drive the ongoing investment wave. See our strategists’ note here for further details.
Nvidia's Blackwell chips

CrowdStrike passes earnings test
CrowdStrike shares managed to come through their first major earnings result since the disastrous outage update incident that effected internet services globally back in July. Q2 Sales beat estimates and -3% reduction on fiscal year revenue guidance was taken as not that dramatic. FY earnings guidance (reduced by -12%) is of course impacted by “client commitment packages” which we must assume to be a fancy word for very big compensations. The bearish investors on CrowdStrike would say that the company did not provide enough clarity about the fallout means for the business longer term.
CrowdStrike faces renewed pressure

PDD suffers a shocker
PDD Holdings (parent company of Chinese e-commerce giant Temu) saw its shares decline by almost a third this week after Q2 earnings missed on revenue and the e-commerce giant provided a muted outlook saying, “revenue growth will inevitably face pressure”. PDD also talked about the extreme competition in China and the pressure on margins. Recent Chinese economic data shows economic weakness continuing for the country causing a slowing of personal income gains and damaged confidence that is having a depressing effect on consumption. Investors seem to have been caught out by the miss as the shares had gained about +20% since late July.
China Consumer and Technology

FTSE Index rebalance for household names
On Tuesday, FTSE announced the indicative changes for the upcoming quarterly review. Household names Burberry Group and EasyJet are set to leave the FTSE 100, marking the end of a 15-year stay for luxury brand Burberry. Raspberry Pi attracted client interest with its IPO earlier in the year, and now the UK tech name looks set to join the FTSE 250. Confirmed changes will be announced on Wednesday 4th September. While the rebalance itself will take place at the market close, Friday the 20th September. Expect heightened volumes and volatility.


Looking ahead, there is a US and Canadian market holiday for Labor Day (Monday 2^nd Sept). Next week’s earnings highlights will be Zscaler (Tues), Gitlab (Tues), Broadcom (Thurs) and trader favourite Nio Inc. (Thurs). The economy calendar includes the Canadian central bank rate decision (Wed). US JOLTs job opening (Weds) and Non-farm payrolls (Fri). There are also August PMI readings from China, Eurozone, UK and US which are released throughout the week.