Nvidia Surpasses Apple: A Summit of Tech Giants

Last Friday witnessed an unexpected leadership change in the world of stock markets: Nvidia temporarily surpassed Apple to become the largest company in the world by market capitalization. The reason for this rise is the enormous demand for the company's AI chips, which reached a value of $3.53 trillion, slightly above Apple's $3.52 trillion valuation. While Apple's stock rose by 0.4%, Nvidia ended the week with an increase of 0.8%. Along with Microsoft, these tech giants significantly contributed to the positive development on Wall Street, which reached new record highs this year. Microsoft achieved a market capitalization of $3.18 trillion through a similarly promising development. Nvidia, a key player in the field of artificial intelligence, recorded an impressive price increase of around 18% in October. The catalyst was the announcement of a capital increase by OpenAI, the developer of the popular chatbot ChatGPT, amounting to $6.6 billion. Semiconductor stocks were also positively influenced by Western Digital's quarterly results, which exceeded expectations and raised hopes for increased demand in the data center sector. Among options traders, Nvidia is considered a favorite due to strong earnings forecasts and the rising demand for AI technologies, which have propelled the stock up by a staggering 190% so far this year. At the same time, Apple struggles with declining smartphone demand, especially in China, where sales fell by 0.3% while Huawei rose by 42%. Nevertheless, analysts expect Apple to announce a year-over-year revenue increase of 5.55% to $94.5 billion on Thursday, while Nvidia's revenue growth is estimated at about 82%, reaching $32.9 billion. Together, the three companies—Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft—account for over a quarter of the weight in the S&P 500, giving a strong boost to the index. Expectations for artificial intelligence and potential interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve are also fueling market expectations.