Stars Align for Nasdaq Composite as Chip Stocks Roar and Oil Pulls Back

Quick Read

• Tech stocks are taking a leadership position in the broader market rally, catapulting the Nasdaq Composite to record highs around 26,000.

• Hyperscaler capital expenditure is reaccelerating as Anthropic’s revenue and usage surge 80x on an annualized basis against internal plans, driving chip orders and semiconductor leadership in the tech rally.

• The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and AMD wasn’t one of them. Get them here FREE.

The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) etched a fresh all-time high and shows little sign of slowing down, with the tech-heavy benchmark up roughly 14% over the past month alone. Semiconductors have carried much of the load: the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (^SOX) has surged around 60% year-to-date. Right now the stars are aligning: cooling oil prices, a stronger-than-expected jobs reading, and blowout chip earnings are all converging to keep the rally alive, buoying the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) closer to 26,000 on the day.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei disclosed Q1 revenue and usage surged 80x on an annualized basis against an internal plan of 10x, which is exactly why hyperscaler capex and chip orders keep reaccelerating. Leadership remains narrow but profitable.

The wildcards from here are oil and the U.S.-Iran situation. Citi’s Scott Chronert cautioned that the duration of the conflict carries meaningful implications for broader economic conditions.

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Chips are doing the heavy lifting

NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) alone added roughly $260 billion in market capitalization in a single trading day, with shares closing near $208. The breadth inside the chip complex is the real story, with year-to-date leadership reading like a who’s who of AI infrastructure. So far this year, chip stocks have been on a tear.

Here are some YTD tallies:

SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) up 494%, powered by a datacenter segment and a gross margins. Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) is up 206%, after being selected as host CPU for NVIDIA’s DGX Rubin NVL8 systems and inking a multiyear Google partnership. Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) is up 134%, riding a memory supercycle with order books extending into 2027 and Cloud Memory gross margins running at 66%. Marvell Technology (NASDAQ:MRVL) has added 103%, with Data Center now 73% of revenue and the Celestial AI acquisition adding optical interconnect capability. Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) has risen 97%, after locking in a Meta deal for up to 6 GW of Instinct GPUs and guiding Q2 revenue growth of roughly 46% YoY.

Fundamentals are catching up to prices. AMD’s Q1 2026 revenue hit $10.25 billion, with data center sales up 57% YoY, and CEO Lisa Su told investors the CPU market could top $120 billion by 2030, expanding at a CAGR exceeding 35%. SanDisk posted $5.95 billion in revenue at a 78% gross margin. Bernstein’s Mark Li called for another sharp price increase for DRAM and NAND in Q2 2026, with pricing holding into 2027.

Macro greased the rally

Initial jobless claims came in at 200,000, below the 205,000 consensus and consistent with a tight labor market. The 10-year Treasury yield sits at 4.43%, and the VIX is around 17, in the normal range. WTI crude is trading near $90, easing inflation pressure.

What today’s session tells you

Earnings are doing the work. Deutsche Bank has characterized this cycle as potentially one of the best earnings seasons in two decades, with S&P 500 profit growth tracking near 25%, and analysts are revising numbers higher rather than trimming. Watch Friday’s payrolls and any reversal in WTI back toward triple digits.

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