Market Volatility Amid Earnings Season and Policy Shifts: NVIDIA, Oklo, and Eli Lilly in Focus

During the last two weeks, the stock market has fluctuated greatly, partly due to the election of the new US president, Donald Trump, and partly because we’re right in the middle of earnings season, when many companies report their earnings and forecasts, leading to changes in stock prices.

NVIDIA

Our holding, Nvidia (NVDA), has probably been one of the most talked about stocks in recent years due to its amazing returns. As of today, it is also the world’s largest company by market cap. The company reported its Q4 results on Wednesday 20 after the market closed, and despite topping expectations, the stock shares fell, failing to continue to fuel the AI spark. The company reported third-quarter adjusted earnings of 81 cents per share, compared with estimates of 75 cents per share, with a revenue of $37.5 billion compared with analysts’ average estimate of $37.09 billion. It also posted an important growth in data center revenue of 112% reaching $30.77 billion. Despite these great numbers, the excitement around the earnings was too high after investors got used to stellar results in each report session, thins because when the bar is set this high even an amazing reporting might not be enough.

OKLO

An interesting stock that has come out lately is surely Oklo (OKLO) which is a fission technology and nuclear fuel recycling company, that is engaged in developing fast fission power plants to provide clean and affordable energy at scale. A notable mention is that the company is backed by Sam Altman and Peter Thiel, increasing the general interest in the company. Also, the field in which the company works is getting a lot of interest as nuclear power has been cited as the favorite in the search for new sources of energy for data centers, and the likes of NVIDIA and Microsoft have made it clear that they will turn to nuclear power to get energy for the data centers. On Wednesday 20 the stock closed the day at -3,9% after Kerrisdale Capital announced it would short the stock and ended the day at 20,95$, despite decreasing even more in after hours.

ELI LILLY

Our holding Eli Lilly (LLY) which is one of the most famous pharmaceutical companies in the world was subject to a decrease since newly elected president Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr as leader of the Department of Health and Human Services. The nomination led most shares of pharmaceutical companies to drop and in particular, LLY dropped by 3% since then. The drop comes as a result of companies being afraid of what the new leader of HHS will implement when he takes charge in January, but fortunately for them, analysts say that the head of HHS is usually more of an administrative role. RFK Jr. made important statements about changing the approach to fight obesity by incentivizing good nutrition instead of obesity drugs, but analysts say that actually RFK Jr. remains limited in his ability to influence either policy or pricing of obesity medications and so the total risk for LLY and other obesity drug maker like NOVO is still quite small. Despite this on Wednesday 20 shares were up 3.25% closing the day at $753.41.