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By Caroline Valetkevitch
NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. stocks ended higher on Thursday as shares of Nvidia gained after its quarterly results, while investors digested a late-afternoon court ruling that reinstated the most sweeping of President Donald Trump's tariffs.
The appeals court ruling came a day after a trade court had ordered an immediate block on the tariffs.
Trading was choppy for much of the day and indexes ended well off their highs of the session, however, with investors trying to digest the rulings and as shares of Salesforce fell 3.3%. Salesforce's stock was down even as the enterprise software provider raised its annual revenue and adjusted profit forecasts.
"Trump has already rolled back most of these tariffs anyway, so these court rulings are just headlines," said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of 50 Park Investments in New York.
"As long as the market doesn't tank on the news, it's just a secondary" thing, he said.
Nvidia gained 3.2% after the company late on Wednesday reported upbeat sales results, driven by customers stockpiling AI chips ahead of U.S. export restrictions on China.
The company, however, warned that the new curbs are expected to cut $8 billion from its current-quarter sales.
Optimism about corporate earnings and Nvidia in particular is providing some support, said Oliver Pursche, senior vice president, adviser for Wealthspire Advisors in Westport, Connecticut.
"It's about corporate earnings in general," he said.
Nvidia, which is now up just 3.6% for the year, was the last of the "Magnificent Seven" megacap tech and growth companies to report results for this earnings period.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 117.03 points, or 0.28%, to 42,215.73, the S&P 500 gained 23.62 points, or 0.40%, to 5,912.17 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 74.93 points, or 0.39%, to 19,175.87.
Trade developments have whipsawed the stock market this year, especially after Trump's April 2 announcement of sweeping tariffs on imports globally.
The S&P 500 has rebounded from a selloff in early April as trade tensions have eased and as first-quarter earnings have been mostly better than expected. The index is now up 0.5% for 2025 but off its February record high.
Still, investors have become accustomed to Trump announcing steep tariffs, only to postpone them soon afterward. That has led to the acronym TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out), coined by the Financial Times.
"It's cute; it's not a strategy," said Pursche, referring to the acronym.