LIVE MARKETS-US stocks waver as Nvidia looms

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US STOCKS WAVER AS NVIDIA LOOMS

Wall Street stocks ended mixed on Wednesday, with the major indexes paring losses in the last half hour of trading.

The minutes and seconds are ticking down to Nvidia's NVDA.O quarterly report, which analysts are expecting to show an 85.7% year-over-year surge in quarterly adjusted EPS and annual revenue growth of 83.0%, a very high bar for the darling of the AI boom.

Investors will parse the chipmaker's results and forecasts for clues regarding the path forward for the nascent technology, which has driven much of the stock market's gains for about two years now.

At any rate, Nvidia options suggest an 8.5% share price swing on Thursday, according to options analytics service ORATS, which is comparable to the 8.3% average stock move the day after results over the last 12 quarters.

Consumer discretionary stocks .SPLRCD and chips .SOX underperformed the broader market.

Risk appetite was soured partly due to Russia-Ukraine tensions, which escalated after Ukraine fired a salvo of U.K.-made missiles into Russia a day after it did the same with U.S.-made weapons.

Sentiment was further dampened by Target's TGT.N disappointing holiday quarter sales and profit estimates, which sent the discount retailer's shares down 21.4%.

Here's your closing snapshot:

(Stephen Culp, Saqib Ahmed)

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