Nvidia reported, Nvidia delivered. The world’s most valuable company posted fiscal Q2 2027 revenue of $92.22 billion, a staggering 106% year-on-year surge, with data centre sales alone soaring 117% to $89.02 billion. But it was the forward guidance that truly electrified markets: fiscal Q3 revenue is expected at $108 billion, and CFO Colette Kress projected fiscal year 2028 revenue growth of approximately 70% — a supply-constrained outlook, with CEO Jensen Huang emphasising that “even though our demand is much greater than 70%, our supply allows us to confidently deliver 70%.”

Shares finished up 8.7%, their biggest single-day gain since April 2025, adding more than $440 billion in market capitalisation. The rally lifted the broader tech complex and dragged the benchmark S&P 500 to a 0.7% gain. But leadership narrowed sharply — tech was the only sector in the green, rising 3.4%, while the other ten all declined. Healthcare and consumer sectors fell roughly 1%.

Have AI bubble fears been greatly exaggerated, or are they just inflating further? Nvidia’s revenue growth and forecasts are astonishing — some analysts are speculating that annual revenue could reach $1 trillion in a couple of years. But that bet relies on companies across the economy splurging all their free cash flows into a second AI capex boom, says Bob Elliott at Unlimited Funds. It’s a high bar. Separately, Nvidia is reportedly nearing a $13 billion deal to acquire AI startup Hugging Face.

The waiting is almost over. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh makes his keynote speech at the Kansas City Fed’s Jackson Hole symposium on Friday morning, with the investment world focused on what he says about inflation and how he intends to get it back down to target. There’s a chance he will disappoint expectations, nodding instead to broader issues like the five “task forces” he has set up to overhaul the Fed’s wider operational framework.

The stakes are high. His press conference after the July FOMC meeting, where he equivocated over his commitment to the Fed’s 2% inflation goal, was widely seen as a misstep. Long bond yields have been climbing, with the 30-year now above 5.2%. “If he does not give any framework guidance, the risk is that it will involve a much higher move in long rates,” warned Apollo’s Torsten Slok.

30-Year U.S. Treasury Yield • Source: Bloomberg

Much of the recent focus in global bond markets has understandably been centred on Washington, but Paris is — or should be — on investors’ radar too. France’s fragile finances face a critical few months, with the annual budget battle this year preceding next spring’s presidential election. At this early juncture, the frontrunners are hard-left and hard-right candidates promising to spend big.

France’s debt is at a record high, its bond yields are higher than Italy’s, and the yield spread over German debt could soon rise above 100 basis points — it was close to 50 bps just six months ago, before the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran. France’s fiscal worries often flare up but usually dissipate quickly enough. This time might be different: the global backdrop is more challenging, with bond markets across the industrialised world also under pressure.

Oil climbed around 2% on Thursday, with WTI settling at $83.68 a barrel, as diplomatic efforts toward an agreement over the Strait of Hormuz hit fresh hurdles. Gold held above $4,600 per ounce, the dollar was flat, and the Australian dollar was the biggest climber among G10 currencies. Bitcoin reclaimed $80,000.