Markets on both sides of the border rise as Nvidia earnings take center stage

A sign board displays the TSX as women walk past the Richmond Adelaide Centre in the financial district in Toronto on Wednesday. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Evan Buhler

TORONTO — Canada’s main stock index finished more than 230 points higher on Wednesday, helped by strength in technology stocks, while U.S. markets also gained ground ahead of a key earnings report from Nvidia.

“It’s been a really great year for equity markets. But we’ve noticed that’s primarily been driven by AI and a lot of that is speculation. Some of the hype that we’re feeling right now, it feels a bit familiar,” said Ainsley Mackie, portfolio manager at Verecan Capital Management.

“It reminds me of the late 90s tech and even the cannabis boom of the late 2010s.”

She added that excited investors are “running ahead” of fundamentals, noting that a lot of companies are showing good returns this year, but don’t generate any revenue.

“It tells you how much the rally is being driven by excitement and narrative rather than fundamentals,” Mackie said.

With AI enthusiasm driving U.S. markets this year, she said Canada’s benchmark index has been driven by gold. Gold prices rose sharply until around October and have since declined slightly. The December gold contract was up US$16.30 at US$4,082.80 an ounce.

“It’s a good reminder that sentiment really does quickly shift,” she said.

The S&P/TSX composite index was up 241.95 points at 30,278.41.

Her comments come as computer chipmaker Nvidia released its quarterly earnings Wednesday that was expected to either deepen a recent downturn in the stock market or prompt a sigh of relief among investors increasingly worried that the world’s most valuable company is perched atop an artificial intelligence bubble that’s about to burst.

Nvidia’s report has turned into a pulse check on an AI boom that began three years ago when OpenAI released ChatGPT. Wall Street’s most influential stock climbed 2.8 per cent as traders made their final moves ahead of the chip company’s profit report.

After the closing bells, Nvidia reported sales of the computing chips powering the artificial intelligence craze surged beyond the lofty bar set by stock market analysts in a performance that may ease recent jitters about a big tech boom.

“In general, with the bigger megacaps, they’re doing so much investing right now in AI … and we don’t know how those numbers are going to play out,” Mackie said.

In the past few weeks, more investors are starting to wonder if the AI craze has been overblown, even as big U.S. tech companies like Alphabet increase their budgets for building more AI factories.

That’s why Nvidia’s recent market value has fallen by more than 10 per cent — a reversal known as a correction in investors’ parlance — just three weeks after it became the first company to be valued at $5 trillion.

Given the current market dynamics, Mackie said she recommends investors stay diversified.

“We just see all this growth in the market right now. That’s really based on hype, and that hype can change really quickly. Make sure you’re diversified geographically, sector-wise, management style-wise, so that when things are rocky, hopefully you can ride out those waves,” she said.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 47.03 points at 46,138.77. The S&P 500 index was up 24.84 points at 6,642.16, while the Nasdaq composite was up 131.38 points at 22,564.23.

The Canadian dollar traded for 71.23 cents US compared with 71.44 cents US on Tuesday.

The January crude oil contract was down US$1.42 at US$59.25 per barrel.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 19, 2025.

Daniel Johnson, The Canadian Press