Wall St. ends down; Nvidia reports, shares tumble

STORY: U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday ahead of a quarterly earnings report from AI darling Nvidia after the closing bell, Wall Street's centerpiece event of the week.

The Dow shed four-tenths of a percent, the S&P 500 lost six-tenths and the Nasdaq dropped more than 1%.

Nvidia forecast third-quarter revenue largely in line with Wall Street's estimates.

But after several blowout quarters, Wednesday's report failed to impress, with Nvidia's stock, which closed down 2%, falling more than 5% in extended trading.

Brad Conger, chief investment officer at Hirtle Callaghan, explained why investors, even before the report, were bracing for less-than-blockbuster guidance from the AI chip leader.

"There is a marked slowdown in the year-over-year growth rate and the rate of surprises. So the guidance, the rate at which they have beaten guidance over the past five, six quarters, has stepped down. And so I think there might have been a recognition of... this might be the quarter where they just meet guidance, in which case the the expectations and the valuation are so high at Nvidia that it's very probable that meeting guidance means the stock sells off."

Other chip stocks also dipped, with Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices each losing ground.

And fellow Magnificent 7 members Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon dipped lower as well.

But the biggest tech tumble by far came from Super Micro Computer, whose shares plunged 19% after the AI server maker said it would delay the filing of its annual report, a day after Hindenburg Research disclosed a short position in the company.

In notable non-tech news, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway briefly passed $1 trillion in market value for the first time ever.