Stocks closed higher yesterday, led by the tech-heavy Nasdaq and S&P 500 with 1.26% and 0.81% respectively. Both indexes are now up for the week. And the others are not far behind.

Yesterday's MBA Mortgage Applications showed the Composite Index up 0.4% w/w with Purchases off -4.7%, and Refi's up 4.1%.

And the Survey of Business Uncertainty showed Sales Growth expectations up 3.72% vs. last month's 3.73%, and Employment Growth up 4.33% vs. last month's 4.29%.

Today we'll get Weekly Jobless Claims, Retail and Wholesale Inventories, and the Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Index.

But what everybody was waiting for yesterday was NVIDIA's earnings. After the close we got them and they posted a positive EPS surprise of 6.58%, and a positive sales surprise of 4.14%. That translated to a quarterly EPS growth rate of 90.6% vs. this time last year, and a sales growth of 73.2%. They also guided Q1'26 revenue higher with a midpoint forecast of $78 billion, which is 8.14% higher than the analyst estimates of $72.13B.

This makes it 11 quarters in a row of at least double-digit growth rates (nearly three spectacular years of growth). Five of those quarters were triple-digit growth rates, with one quarter showing quadruple-digit growth. They once again showed the growth story in AI is real, driven by incredible demand for the transformational technology.

They were up 1.41% in the regular session before earnings, and another 3.50% in after-hours trade following earnings.

We also heard from Snowflake after the close, and they posted a positive EPS surprise of 18.5%, and a positive sales surprise of 2.42%. That equated to a quarterly EPS growth rate of 7%, and a sales growth of 30%. Next quarter product revenue guidance was up 0.6% above estimates, and full-year guidance up 1.98% above estimates. If achieved, that works out to a 26.7% y/y growth rate. They were up 5.06% in the regular session, and down roughly -2.00% in after-hours trade.

And Synopsys posted after the close as well, reporting a positive EPS surprise of 5.60%, and a positive sales surprise of 0.75%, for a quarterly EPS growth rate of 67.5%, and a sales growth of 65.6%. They guided next quarter EPS up 1.95% above the consensus, with revenue guidance up 0.31% above the consensus. They were up 1.92% in the regular session, and off -4.20% after hours.

We'll hear from another 431 companies on deck to report earnings today, including Dell, Intuit, Monster Beverage, Alibaba and Baidu, to name a handful.

In other news, nuclear talks between Iran and the U.S. will resume in Geneva today. The threat of a military response by the U.S. if talks eventually fail has kept the market on edge. There is some optimism that a deal, or at least some progress toward a deal could be made. But the U.S. has given Iran a deadline, which by some estimations works out to be sometime in early March for some type of resolve. In the meantime, the U.S. imposed more sanctions on Iran yesterday, targeting their "shadow fleet" of oil tankers; more sanctions on a group of Iranian individuals, companies and ships tied to their ballistic missile program; and Treasury sanctions on entities involved in Iran's weapons network.

Momentum is back on the market's side. We'll see if that can be extended today and for the rest of the week.

See you tomorrow,