A trader reacts on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City, U.S., August 22, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
The S&P 500 fell on Monday as investors looked ahead to Nvidia earnings later in the week.
The broad market S&P 500 shed 0.1%, while the 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 242 points, or 0.5%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite reversed earlier losses to rise 0.3%, propped up by gains in Nvidia and Intel.
Nvidia shares were around 2% higher. The artificial intelligence chip darling received a number of positive endorsements from analysts heading into its earnings report after the bell Wednesday.
Additionally, Intel shares jumped more than 1%, extending their gains from the previous session, on the heels of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick revealing Friday that the U.S. government has taken a 10% stake in the chipmaker. That could be a sign of more to come from the Trump administration, as White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett said Monday that the stake is part of broader strategy to create a sovereign wealth fund.
“I’m sure that at some point there’ll be more transactions, if not in this industry then other industries,” the director of the National Economic Council said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
President Donald Trump echoed that sentiment, saying Monday morning that he will make deals like the Intel stake “all day long.”
Stocks rallied Friday, with the Dow soaring to new all-time intraday and closing highs and the S&P 500 coming within three points of its record at its session high, after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s widely anticipated annual speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, during which he signaled the central bank could begin easing monetary policy next month. Expectations for a quarter-point rate cut in September jumped to about 86%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool, from about 75% earlier in the week.
But CFRA Research’s Sam Stovall isn’t surprised that stocks are taking a breather by giving back some of their gains Monday.
“A lot of the gains that we saw on Friday were the result of short covering, because I think people were very worried that the Fed would basically say, ‘We’re not cutting for the rest of the year,'” the firm’s chief investment strategist said. “We have so much stuff between now and September 17 that while we benefited from the enthusiasm on Friday, we still have a lot that we have to endure before we are convinced that the Fed will be cutting rates,” he also said, adding that the market will see “restrained gains” until then.