US markets bounce back as investors reassess risks of AI takeover; NVIDIA to release Q4 earnings today

The US markets rebounded on Tuesday as investors reassessed the impact of AI on existing services. The Dow Jones and the S&P500 advanced 0.8%, and the NASDAQ climbed 1.1%. On the geopolitical front, the US-Iran talks are back in focus, with Iran’s deputy foreign minister saying the country will do whatever it takes to reach a deal with the US. The US stock market futures buoyed further on Wednesday morning, extending the previous day's optimism.

On the stock-specific front, a rally was also seen in software stocks like Salesforce, which gained 4.4% on Tuesday and has fallen 32% over the past month. Shares of IBM also advanced over 2% after a sharp 13% fall on Monday. IBM shares were in focus after Anthropic announced that Claude code could work on the COBOL system to help it modernise and analyse faster.

In a separate development, Anthropic announced several new plugins targeting areas like investment banking, equity research, financial services, and human resources, weeks after its new models routed the software stocks. The plugins were developed in partnership with news agencies like Thomson Reuters, CRM software developers like Salesforce and financial data analysis platforms like FactSet.

All eyes now remain on NVIDIA as it will announce its quarterly earnings on Wednesday. Investors and market participants expect the result to beat the market expectations to justify the current valuation demand for AI stocks in general.