You want names? Fine, we've got a two-ton tech quarter composed of computer-and-iPhone kingpin Apple (AAPL) , e-commerce and cloud-services colossus Amazon (AMZN) , Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META) , and software giant Microsoft (MSFT) all cracking open their books.
On top of these, a slew of economic reports is heading our way, including Consumer Confidence for April, initial jobless claims, and pending home sales for March.
And all this is happening amid President Donald Trump's ever-changing tariff agenda.
Heck, this week promises to be so crazy that TheStreet Pro's Chris Versace is going full Vin Diesel on us.
Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang has been facing several challenges recently.
Veteran trader notes AI capex impact on Nvidia
“It's going to be fast. It's going to be furious," the veteran fund manager said in his recent TheStreet Pro video, invoking the action movie franchise. "We're going to get a lot of data. And if you're thinking that we are going to do our best to connect as many dots as possible, well, you are correct.”
Versace, lead portfolio manager for TheStreet Pro Portfolio, noted that Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta account for just over 19% of the S&P 500.
And while he will naturally dig into the results and guidance coming from the massive companies, he will also be focused like a Vulcan 20-20 laser on what Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have to say about their capital spending, particularly the dollars they're dropping on AI and data centers.
"We saw that last week when Alphabet reported, reaffirming its very big, $75 billion big, capital spending plan, that really skews heavily, heavily, towards AI, data center and servers," Versace said. "So we will be watching what those three companies have to say this week."
AI expenditures are massively important. Microsoft and Amazon Web Services have said they planned to scale back their efforts to build data centers, sparking concern that the AI bubble might have sprung a slow leak.
But Alphabet (GOOGL) affirmed its $75 billion capex guidance for 2025 and reported strong advertising sales growth, which it said can be attributed to its AI investments.
And with the aggregate capital-spending comments, Versace said, "we know who everybody is going to be looking at."
"It's going to be Nvidia," he said. "[Remember,] Nvidia accounts for about 5.5% of the S&P 500. So, when you kind of roll back and you think about these five companies, it's almost 25% of the basket. And we know that these five companies account for even more of the Nasdaq Composite."
"So, it's also going to be a very, very big week for that market index as well," he added.
Nvidia faces fresh challenge from Huawei
Once viewed as an AI-chip making battle cruiser, Nvidia (NVDA) has been challenged this year, and its shares have slid nearly 20% since January.
Chinese AI startup DeekSeek hit Nvidia hard earlier this year after releasing a large language model that it said was trained on less advanced chips at far lower cost than rival technologies require.
Nvidia, which is scheduled to report earnings next month, took another shot to the breadbasket when it said it would incur a $5.5 billion first-quarter charge related to its H2O graphics processing units due to new export restrictions on sales of its chips to countries like China.
On April 22, Deutsche Bank lowered its price target on Nvidia to $125 a share from $135, while reiterating a hold rating on the stock, telling investors that “uncertainties surrounding the sustainability of AI-related [capital spending] appear to be rising given the current trade war.”
And now Nvidia is facing another challenge from China's Huawei Technologies, which is reportedly preparing to test its newest and most powerful artificial-intelligence processor, hoping to replace some of Nvidia's higher-end products, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Huawei has approached some Chinese tech companies about testing the technical feasibility of the new chip, called the Ascend 910D.
The company hopes the latest iteration of its Ascend AI processors will be more powerful than Nvidia's H100. It's slated to receive the first batch of samples of the processor as early as late May.
The development is still at an early stage, and a series of tests will be needed to assess the chip’s performance and get it ready for customers, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.
Huawei has developed some of China’s most promising substitutes for Nvidia’s AI chips and it is part of Beijing’s effort to groom a self-sufficient semiconductor industry.
