Good Evening! After four consecutive days of falls for the S&P 500, U.S. equities surged upward on Thursday to close in the green following a volatile day.
The S&P 500 rose 0.53%, while the Dow Jones climbed 0.33%. The Nasdaq Composite increased by 0.72%.
A NEW PATH?
Despite a 46% year-over-year fall in gaming revenue, graphics card titan Nvidia (NVDA) reported fourth-quarter profits that were above analysts’ expectations on both the top and bottom lines. Here are the numbers!
- Revenue: $6.05 Billion vs. $6.02 Billion Expected
- Gaming: $1.83 Billion vs. $1.6 Billion Expected
- Earnings Per Share: $0.88 vs. $0.81 Expected
New growth opportunities? Wall Street feels that Nvidia has a fresh growth opportunity because of the recent interest surge in generative A.I. platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bing, and Google’s (GOOG, GOOGL) Bard. The graphics cards manufactured by Nvidia are well-suited for artificial intelligence systems that demand a great deal of computing power.
The new opportunity could be great because… Like with the rest of the gaming industry, the chip manufacturer has seen a dip in sales compared to the same time last year, when gamers were eager for new gear and software as the epidemic period came to a close. The company’s gaming business revenue fell 51% year-over-year during the third quarter.
WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a nonprofit investment manager controlled by church officials have agreed to pay $5 million in penalties to resolve SEC allegations that they exploited shell companies to conceal the size of their huge investment portfolio for more than two decades.
Here is what the regulators stated… The SEC said from 1997 to 2019, the investment manager Ensign Peak Advisors failed to provide the necessary documentation detailing its holdings. Instead, top officials of the church, which is generally known as the Mormon church, instructed it to submit smaller reports using 13 shell corporations. According to the SEC, the church anticipated “negative repercussions” from disclosing its investments, which had risen to $32 billion by 2018.
Did the Church have anything to say? The church, like the vast majority of institutions involved with the SEC, has neither confirmed nor disputed the agency’s charges. Nonetheless, the company did issue a statement stating, “We affirm our commitment to comply with the law, regret mistakes made, and now consider this matter closed.”