Stocks closed mixed yesterday with the Dow, S&P 500 and mid-cap S&P 400 posting modest gains, while the Nasdaq and small-cap Russell 2000 posted modest losses.

Markets opened near unchanged yesterday, but then quickly hit their worst levels of the session. From there, they all began to slowly make their way back up to close near their best levels of the session.

The narrow day can likely be attributed to anticipation of NVIDIA's earnings report, which was due after the close.

Sure enough, shortly after the close, they reported their numbers and posted a positive EPS surprise of 8%, and a positive sales surprise of 5.27%. That translated to a quarterly EPS growth rate of 103% vs. this time last year, and a sales growth of 93.6%. They were off -0.76% in the regular session before earnings. And down roughly -3% in after-hours trade following earnings.

The reason why so much focus was on NVIDIA's earnings is because they are a bellwether for understanding if the AI spending spree continues, or if it has begun to cool down. Obviously, one company can't speak for them all. But given their importance in the AI space, a look at their sales shows no slowdown in demand, and that the AI boom is still alive and well.

NVIDIA also raised their Q4 revenue outlook to $37.5 billion vs. the consensus for $37B. That would represent another 70% quarterly sales growth vs. last year. Very impressive.

Why the soft response after the report? Let's not forget that they are up 194% YTD. That's on top of last year's 239%. We'll see how they trade in the regular session. But it was another stellar quarter. And their position in the "age of AI" (quote attributed to CEO Jensen Huang), couldn't be better.

Yesterday's earnings actually got off to a rough start after Target posted a negative EPS surprise of -19.2%, and a negative sales surprise of -0.94%. Their cautious outlook didn't help matters, which saw the stock down by -22% in the regular session.

But also before the open, Williams-Sonoma posted a positive EPS surprise of 11.4%, and a positive sales surprise of 1.47%. They soared 27.5% in the regular session following their earnings.

Today we'll hear from another 93 companies on deck to report with BJ's Wholesale Club, Deere and Baidu going before the open, while Intuit and NetApp (to name a handful), go after the close.

In other news yesterday, MBA Mortgage Applications rose 1.7% w/w with purchases up 2.0%, and refi's up 1.8%.

And the Atlanta Fed Business Inflation Expectations came in at 2.2% y/y, in line with last month's pace.

Today we'll get Weekly Jobless Claims, the Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index, Existing Home Sales, Leading Indicators, the Quarterly Services Survey, and the Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Index. We'll also hear from Fed policymakers Beth Hammack, Austan Goolsbee, Jeffrey Schmid, and Michael Barr as they speak at their respective engagements throughout the day.

With two more days to go, most of the indexes are up for the week so far, showing the post-election rally continues, sans last week's pause.

And as we close out another better-than-expected earnings season, along with estimates for coming quarters looking even better, it looks like there's plenty more upside to go by year's end.

See you tomorrow,