Nvidia Adds $442B In A Day. Marvell Beats, Margins Send the Bill

 

U.S. stocks climbed Thursday because Nvidia put the market on its back. The chipmaker jumped 8.7%, technology gained 3.2%, and the S&P 500 cleared 7,700. Most stocks sat this one out. Ten of 11 sectors finished red.  Thursday night was less generous. Affirm popped after a strong outlook, but Marvell and IREN fell even with billions in AI demand on the books. Rubrik and SentinelOne also gave back part of their regular-session rallies after reporting.  Retail skipped the megacaps and piled into the earnings names. IREN and Marvell ranked first and second on Stocks, and both streams stayed extremely bullish through the selloffs.  Today's Briefing: Powered by Stocktwits Community API. After the Bell: Marvell and IREN sold off, Affirm rallied, and cybersecurity gave back its gains.  Stocks: Nvidia added $442B as chips and software carried the session.  What's Trending Now on Stocks

AFTER THE BELL AI’s Show-Me Quarter  Marvell, the custom-chip and data-center connectivity supplier, and IREN, the former bitcoin miner building an AI cloud platform, reported Thursday after the close with enormous AI demand headlines. Both stocks fell because the market wanted proof that those billions can become profitable revenue without margin compression or construction delays.  The RIP: $MRVL fell 7% after hours after closing -1.5%. Adjusted EPS was $0.94 vs. $0.93 expected, revenue hit $2.739B, and data-center sales rose 46% to $2.17B. $IREN slid 6% after hours; FY26 revenue reached $707M against a $702.6M net loss.  Marvell’s $3.15B Q3 revenue guide cleared Wall Street’s roughly $3.03B forecast, but non-GAAP gross margin is expected to fall from 58.9% to 57.5%-58.5%. Its Oct. 6 investor day now has to show how much profit accompanies the raised FY27 and FY28 outlook.  IREN’s problem is timing. The company has $4B in contracted ARR tied to 2026 capacity, but only $1B is operating. A new frontier-AI customer and GPU financing covers roughly 90% of the capex story, but Horizons 2 through 4 still need to reach markets by the end of the year.  The Community Read: The latest $MRVL reading is extremely bullish, inspect the margin tradeoff -> Only Affirm Got Paid  Affirm, the buy-now-pay-later provider, joined cybersecurity firms Rubrik and SentinelOne in reporting Thursday after the close. The market rewarded Affirm’s forward growth, but faded both security names after each had already climbed roughly 11% during regular trading.  The RIP: $AFRM rose 9% after hours as Q4 revenue climbed 33% to $1.166B, GMV grew 36% to $14.1B, and GAAP EPS hit $4.62. $RBRK fell 7% despite $0.20 vs. $0.04 expected, while $S slid 3% after revenue rose 21% to $292M.  Affirm guided Q1 revenue to $1.19B-$1.22B, ahead of Wall Street’s roughly $1.16B estimate. That outlook did more work than the headline EPS, which benefited from Affirm releasing a large deferred-tax valuation allowance. The room quickly split between $100 price targets and traders digging through the tax footnotes.  Rubrik’s revenue rose 38% to $427.3M, subscription ARR climbed 33% to $1.66B, and management raised fiscal-year revenue guidance to $1.685B-$1.693B. SentinelOne lifted ARR 22% to $1.218B, expanded its non-GAAP operating margin from 2% to 10%, and guided Q3 revenue to $309M-$311M. Rubrik has a lot to prove, while SentinelOne still faces the question: why choose it over CrowdStrike?  The Community Read: The $AFRM room is bullish, find the tax-adjusted profit debate ->

STOCKS Nvidia Clears the Bar

Nvidia turned Wednesday’s earnings beat into an 8.7% Thursday rally after its Q3 forecast confirmed that AI infrastructure spending was still accelerating. The gain pushed technology higher while every other S&P 500 sector fell, a $442B day for Nvidia stock. It beat and rose results as always, but it was the investor call that did the magic this time.

Jensen Huang said the firm would grow sales 70% in fiscal 2028.

The RIP: $NVDA rose 8.7%. Adjusted EPS reached $2.22 vs. $2.09 expected, revenue hit $96.2B vs. $92.2B, and data center sales reached $89B. Q3 revenue guidance was $108B, plus or minus 2%.

The Community Read: The latest $NVDA reading is neutral, find the China constraint ->

"$NVDA price-target upgrades: GS $300, Bernstein $400, JPM $320, and Melius $420." @RespectMyAuthoritah

SaaSpocalypse Gets Canceled

Salesforce, Okta, and CrowdStrike turned Wednesday’s earnings into a Thursday referendum on whether AI destroys software or creates another reason to buy it. The sellers lost that vote by 20 percentage points or more across all three stocks.

The RIP: $OKTA jumped 28.6%, $CRM rose 22.6%, and $CRWD gained 20.5%. Okta posted $1.05 EPS on $805M revenue; Salesforce posted $5.90 on $11.35B; CrowdStrike added $333M in net-new ARR and raised its FY27 revenue outlook to about $6B.

Salesforce supplied the cleanest answer to the AI-disruption trade: cRPO grew 14% to $33.5B, although quarterly revenue included $456M from Informatica. Okta’s backlog rose 17%, while CrowdStrike’s ending ARR reached $5.84B, showing that AI agents create more identities and attack surfaces to secure. Stocks quickly moved from survival math to debating who sold calls too early. Salesforce’s Sept. 16 investor day, CrowdStrike’s Sept. 2 Fal.Con briefing, and Okta’s 10% Q3 growth guide are the next proof points.

The Community Read: The latest $CRM reading is neutral, test the SaaS comeback ->

POPS & DROPS Trending Now

$BB +12% | BlackBerry: The old phone company found a new AI story

150.6K WATCHERS · BEARISH · NORMAL ACTIVITY BlackBerry surged after QNX added support for Hailo’s edge-AI accelerator, extending the software platform into robotics and other physical-AI systems. The market is beginning to value QNX as more than automotive infrastructure, but the bearish Stocks room remains unconvinced that the opportunity will translate into material revenue.

$WEN -14% | Wendy’s: The bid disappeared, not the bulls

16.3K WATCHERS · 79% BULLISH · HIGH ACTIVITY

Wendy’s sank after Reuters reported that 16% shareholder Trian has no current plans to bid for the burger chain, reversing much of its takeover-fueled rally. With U.S. same-restaurant sales down 7% and full-year guidance withdrawn, the bullish room is deciding whether the deal was delayed or the turnaround is back on the menu.

WHAT’S ON DECK Tomorrow’s Top Things  Macro: Fed Chair Kevin Warsh speaks (10:00 AM ET), University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index (revised) (10:00 AM ET).  Pre-Market Earnings: $JFIN Jiayin Group Inc - ADR.  P.S. You can listen to all of these earnings calls on Stocktwits.