Stock market today: Stocks retreat as Fed decision looms

Live4 updates

• Tuesday, March 19, 2024 at 7:15 am MST

  Trending Stocks in Morning Trading

  These are some of the stocks that lead the Yahoo Finance ranking. trend tickers page during morning trading on Tuesday:

  Unilever (UL): The consumer goods giant rose 2% to start the day after announced plans to spin off its ice cream business —which includes Ben & Jerry's, Magnum and Klondike—and a restructuring plan that could impact 7,500 jobs as part of an effort to save more than $800 million over the next three years.

  Bitcoin (BTC-USD): The dominant cryptocurrency is on its way to suffering its biggest daily drop in two weeks, as investors continue to flee the token after it recently hit an all-time high. Bitcoin was trading at $63,000, a drop of around 7%.

  NVIDIA (NVDA): Fresh from its annual developer conference, the AI ​​darling lost 3% after its presentation its latest AI chipwhich he said is up to 30 times faster than its predecessor.

  Super microcomputer (SMCI): Shares of the server maker sank 11% after saying so plans to sell 2 million shares. The company plans to use the approximately $2 billion raised to support operations and boost manufacturing capacity. The share offering comes as Super Micro shares have soared this year, more than tripling demand for artificial intelligence technology.

• Tuesday, March 19, 2024 at 6:34 am MST

  Stocks fall ahead of Fed meeting

  Wall Street pulled back a bit as Federal Reserve officials began their two-day meeting to decide their next step on interest rate policy.

  The S&P 500 (^GSPC) fell about 0.2%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) rose above the flat line, leaving a victory on Monday for the main indices. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) fell about 0.5% as AI favorite Nvidia (NVDA) was removed after sharing AI upgrades of its annual developers conference.

• Tuesday, March 19, 2024 at 5:30 am MST

  Nvidia's bottom line

  Nvidia (NVDA) shares did not rise much on the first day of its GTC conference despite an impressive array of new product introductions.

  But that doesn't mean that what the company revealed was disappointing, quite the opposite! In fact, I think everything CEO Jensen Huang showed is so complex that it could take a few days for investors to digest it and evaluate whether the stock warrants another push higher.

  Wall Street was satisfied with what it heard.

  Here's what JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur had to say:

  "Overall, the team is further distancing itself with its aggressive cadence of new product releases and increased product segmentation over time. With leading silicon (GPU/DPU/CPU), hardware/software platforms and a strong ecosystem, Nvidia is well positioned to In our view, we will continue to benefit from major secular trends in artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, gaming and autonomous vehicles. Bottom line: NVIDIA is still 1-2 steps ahead of its competitors".

• Tuesday, March 19, 2024 at 5:15 am MST

  The AI ​​stock bubble... or not

  Like Nvidia (NVDA) GTC conference continues on the West Coast, it seems only natural that the new BofA fund manager survey released today would influence the AI ​​stock bubble debate.

  The end result: institutional investors have no idea if this is a bubble!