Wall St climbs 1% with chip stocks rallying before Nvidia results

Wall St climbs 1% with chip stocks rallying before Nvidia results

By Sinéad Carew and Utkarsh Hathi

Wed May 20, 2026  

All eyes were in hot anticipation of Nvidia today and, even though the report was not coming in until after the bell, two other AI giants, Astera Labs and ARM Holdings, bolted up big time and that was more than enough to convince investors that Nvidia would soon be posting a similar result. Thus, all the indexes surged huge, both industrials and tech closing with big 3-digit gains. The war news, rate hikes and inflation have all gone on the backburner again and it’s once again all-out all-AI.  

As today’s expert put it, “It’s actually a little bit unusual because you would expect the market to sit pretty quiet waiting for Nvidia’s results later today. But there’s clearly a lot of optimism.” And ultimately Nvidia did not disappoint, turning in a report that exceeded expectations and announced a huge stock buyback program. The chip index shot up 4.5%. With the stock surge came an easing of the 10-year Treasury which during the last few days has reached a 16-month high. Retails sales is the next big thing with Walmart coming in with its Q1 on Thursday. Volume at 18.73 billion was just a tad above the 18.55 average. 

DJ: 49,363.88  -322.24         NAS: 25,870.71  -220.02        S&P: 7,353.61  -49.44           5/19

DJ: 50,009.35  +645.47        NAS: 26,270.36  +399.65       S&P: 7,432.97  +79.36         5/20

Wed 5-20-26 4:54 pm Wall St climbs 1% with chip stocks rallying before Nvidia results | Reuters