Nvidia Rides Intel's Coattails to All-Time Highs — and the Semiconductor Party Is Just Getting Started
With Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta reporting Wednesday, social sentiment is screaming 'buy the data center' going into the biggest earnings week of the year
Ticker Ratings
Let's set the scene: $NVDA just notched a new all-time high, up 4.3% on the day. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) is up 50% across 18 consecutive winning sessions — the longest streak since the index was founded in 1994. Bloomberg and CNBC's YouTube channels are basically just semiconductor highlight reels at this point, and retail sentiment is going full banana. The catalyst? $INTC — yes, that Intel — just printed its best single-day gain since October 29th, 1987, surging 23-24% on a blowout Q1 beat and Q2 guidance that came in 14% ahead of Wall Street expectations. AI inference demand is supercharging CPU usage, and the new CEO is apparently the organizational equivalent of a cold shower after a decade-long nap.
Now all eyes are on Wednesday's Magnificent Seven trifecta. Bloomberg's Daybreak Weekend podcast flagged the key watch items: Azure cloud growth acceleration for $MSFT, AI monetization signals from $META, and whether Alphabet's ad business held up in a macro fog thick enough to navigate by echolocation. Citi's Drew Pettit told CNBC he sees strong earnings supported by secular trends, with semiconductors and AI infrastructure as top themes — supply constraints expanding margins while sales grow faster than assets. Retail traders heard that and immediately started refreshing their brokerage apps.
The $CHTR bloodbath — down 23-25% in its worst single-day drop on record — serves as the earnings week's cautionary tale: miss on broadband, get vaporized. In this market, you're either a data center or you're Charter Communications, and nobody wants to be Charter Communications.