The Nasdaq topped 23,000 for the first time ever Tuesday, and the S&P 500 also reached a new intraday peak shortly after the opening bell. But stocks gave back early gains on a report from inside Oracle that seems to show the AI revolution could prove to be a long and difficult process in terms of profits.
According to The Information (in a paywall-protected article), internal documents show Oracle (ORCL, -2.4%) lost $100 million during its fiscal 2026 first quarter on rentals of Nvidia (NVDA, -0.3%) Blackwell chips. Oracle stock had its best day in 32 years when it reported first-quarter earnings last month.
Regarding the $100 million loss, Oracle management noted a delay between building a data center and generating revenue from paying customers for using its services. On a day when the earnings calendar is bereft of big names and the economic calendar lacks big numbers, things like this move markets.
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So does the White House, when it approves a major infrastructure project and announces a $35.6 million investment in what until Monday’s closing bell was a $343 million small cap stock.
Trilogy Metals (TMQ, +211.0%) is yet to generate meaningful sales from its mining operations, but the stock now has a market cap north of $1 billion.
Why? Because late Monday, President Donald Trump directed the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to reissue necessary permits for construction of the 211-mile Ambler Road from the Dalton Highway to Alaska’s Ambler Mining District.
The road will enable access to large deposits of copper, cobalt, gallium and germanium, among other critical metals – and Vancouver, Canada-based precious metals miner Trilogy Metals is developing multiple projects in northwest Alaska.
“This proposed partnership with the U.S. government represents a significant milestone for Trilogy Metals and for the development of a secure, domestic supply of critical minerals for America in Alaska,” Trilogy CEO Tony Giardini said in a statement announcing the deal.
Giardini noted “the strategic importance of the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects in supporting U.S. energy, technology, and national security priorities.” And, clearly, the government shutdown did not mean much for TMQ stock today.
At Tuesday’s closing bell, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.2% to 46,602, the broad-based S&P 500 Index was lower by 0.6% to 6,714, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was off 0.7% to 22,788.
More AI infrastructure deals
International Business Machines (IBM, +1.5%) hit a new all-time high and was No. 1 among Dow Jones stocks after it announced a partnership with Anthropic to develop enterprise-ready AI.
According to terms of Big Blue’s deal with the Alphabet (GOOGL, -1.9%)-and Amazon.com (AMZN, +0.4%)-backed builder of Claude, that large language model will be “infused” into IBM’s software portfolio.
IBM doesn’t make lists of quantum computing stocks, but the old-school outfit is advancing in that field as well, including a technical leap for tracking bond market prices in partnership with HSBC (HSBC, -1.1%) announced last month.
AMD stock earns an upgrade
Meanwhile, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, +3.8%) earned an upgrade from a team of Jefferies analysts after the chipmaker announced an infrastructure deal with OpenAI.
“We rarely do this,” wrote Blayne Curtis and the Jefferies analysts at the top of their note explaining the move to boost their rating on AMD stock from Hold to Buy and their 12-month target price from $170 to $300.
The analysts said the AMD-OpenAI deal is “a strong validation of AMD’s AI roadmap and the level of AI demand in general.”
NYSE owner invests in betting on everything
Intercontinental Exchange (ICE, +1.8%), which owns and operates the New York Stock Exchange and was predicted by an AI stock-picker to beat the market, is making a strategic investment in prediction markets operator Polymarket.
According to ICE CEO Jeffrey Sprecher, the investment combines “the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, which was founded in 1792, with a forward-thinking, revolutionary company pioneering change within the Decentralized Finance space.”
Polymarket founder and CEO Shayne Coplan said the partnership “marks a major step in bringing prediction markets into the financial mainstream,” noting that they are “expanding how individuals and institutions use probabilities to understand and price the future.”
What did Tesla do?
Tesla (TSLA, -4.5%) taketh away most of Tuesday as markets awaited follow-through on a Twitter-teased October 7 event many interpreted to be the introduction of a lower-priced electric vehicle. The Magnificent 7 stock was up 5.4% on Monday.
TSLA stock extended its losses after the company introduced two new models with reduced starting prices in response to the elimination of U.S. tax credits for EV purchases.
According to Car and Driver, Tesla cut back a bit on range, power and features “to shave thousands” off sticker prices. “As of this writing (prices can change quickly),” Andrew Krok notes, “the Model 3 Standard starts at $38,630, with the Model Y Standard not far behind at $41,630.”