Nasdaq Composite Live: All Eyes are on the Federal Reserve

The tech-heavy Nasdaq is up about 53 points in premarket.

Fueling upside are the trade war agreements with the European Union, and hopefully with China ahead of the August 1 deadline.

Earnings have also been solid, with Starbucks posting stronger-than-expected revenue for its third quarter. While eps of 50 cents did miss by 15 cents, revenue of $9.46 billion, up 4% year over year, beat by $150 million. SBUX is up about $4 in premarket on those numbers.

We’re also waiting on after-hours earnings from Meta Platforms and Microsoft. With these companies, investors will be paying close attention to AI spending numbers.

And we’re waiting on the Federal Reserve’s interest rate announcement later today.

At the moment, Fed funds futures are pricing in a nearly 98% likelihood of the central bank keeping its key rate at a range of 4.25% to 4.5%, according to CME Group’s FedWatch. Markets don’t anticipate any change to the interest rate until September.

Morgan Stanley Raised its Nvidia Price Target to $200

Just this morning, analysts at Morgan Stanley raised their price target on Nvidia to $200 from $170. The firm, which has an overweight rating on the stock, could extend its gains, especially with artificial intelligence continuing to grow.

“AI strength is exceptional in both supply and demand. All of our data points and contacts are telling us that customers need more compute, and we are seeing a clear acceleration in inference workloads driving that,” said the firm, as quoted by CNBC. “We see significant upside in the 2H of the year with the new Blackwell product cycle for both processors and connectivity/networking/memory, and raise our price targets across our AI semis group.”

The firm also expects Advanced Micro Devices to run higher, updating their price target to $185 from $121 a share.

“The reinstatement of products for the China market has added a new tailwind for AMD/NVDA in the second half, but our enthusiasm is still centered around the level of demand from the core cloud customers,” added the firm, as also quoted by CNBC. “We see Nvidia as the biggest winner of that spend, but AMD should also see upside in the second half around the Mi350 product cycle as well.”

The firm is also bullish on tech giants like Broadcom, noting that strong spending on artificial intelligence will drive further upside in tech giants.

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