Stock Market Today: SPY, QQQ Rally as Oil Sinks 5%; Nvidia Blasts Past Earnings Estimates

Both the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) and the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) closed higher on Wednesday as falling oil prices eased inflation concerns.

News That Moved the Stock Market Today

• Brent crude oil (BZ) fell by over 5% after the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that total U.S. crude inventories, including the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), fell by 17.8 million barrels last week, the largest weekly decline on record.
• Furthermore, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said that 26 vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz over the past 24 hours.
• Oil continued to drop after President Trump said the U.S. is in the “final stages” of negotiations with Iran without disclosing additional details. “We’ll see what happens,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “Either have a deal or we’re going to do some things that are a little bit nasty, but hopefully that won’t happen.”
• April’s Fed minutes showed that a “majority” of policymakers support higher rates if inflation remains above the 2% target.
• Semiconductor and memory stocks rallied ahead of Nvidia’s (NVDA) earnings report, with AMD (AMD), Intel (INTC), and Micron (MU) posting significant gains.
• Nvidia reported first quarter revenue of $81.62 billion on top of an adjusted EPS of $1.87. Both figures were above the consensus analyst estimates of $79.12 billion and $1.77, respectively. The company also boosted its quarterly dividend to 25 cents.
• Intuit (INTU) closed in the red after the company announced plans to lay off 17% of its global workforce, or 3,200 jobs.