News and analysis

What was called "Super Bowl of AI", unfortunately, ended in a draw, leaving both bull and bear teams feeling equally proud, but not entirely satisfied. The game moved into overtime as it has not yet surpassed what was actually expected of the event in the wildest dreams of the excited crowd. We are talking, of course, about Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote speech at the GTC conference this week. The after-party mood is no apparent disappointment but rather a kind of lasting satiety with self-repetitions, as it usually happens when the next book of your favourite author has almost the same matter and a very similar plot, isn't imbued with novelty, and so you have a feeling it's still another self-portrait of the Master, even though a deuced talented copy of the previous one.

Jensen Huang knew everybody was expecting, and he decided to proclaimed the four "noble truths" he already broadcasted before when talking about his vision for AI prospects in the form of four waves, which are 1) Perception AI at the initial stage, focusing on speech recognition and other simple tasks; 2) Generative AI, with the focus of the past 5 years, involving text and image creation through predictive patterns; 3) Agentic AI, which is the current phase where AI interacts digitally and performs tasks autonomously to result in "reasoning models"; 4) Physical AI to represent "the future of AI", powering humanoid robots and real-world applications.

Nvidia's father probably tried to emphasize the multiplying AI monetization potential in stages #3 and #4 of this revolutionary era, stating that all computations take 100 times more tokens and resources than was originally expected at the current point of Agentic AI, but the market had already heard this philosophy and now wanted more precise sales numbers. Huang expected consuming companies' AI-driven capex (capital expenditures) of over $1 trillion globally by the end of 2028. Among other notable details, it was only said that in Nvidia GPU Hopper’s peaking year, they shipped around 1.3 million units, while for Nvidia’s Blackwell in 2025, 3.6 million units have been already ordered, and so traders perfectly knew how to respond.

In particular, they didn't buy the discourse and even briefly dropped the stock price from $122.9 at the peak on March 17 to a much lower range of the next day's regular session, between $114.5 and $115.5. However, the bulls were not averse to buying back these dips again, expanding the trading range to $120+ again within the rest of the week. A simple conclusion is that Nvidia may have mixed dynamics, and even with a possible downside bias in the short term, but will outperform a portfolio of other tech assets to slap into its role of the AI flagship in the months ahead once the current correction phase is exhausted. In short, a temporary decline somewhere close to $100 per share could not be ruled out, but the attractiveness of much higher targets above $180 is calling even stronger than ever.

Why are we so optimistic in the longer-term? We agree with the concept of Nvidia that each large product manufacturer will need two separate facilities, one is for manufacturing the product itself, and the second one is for production of the AI assistance on the surrounding information to sell this product better and in a more effective way with higher marginality. Nvidia's collaboration with General Motors to develop AI for next-generation vehicles, factories, and robots is a good example of it. They also work on AI-integrated wireless networks for 6G with T-Mobile and Cisco. Nvidia's open-source Dynamo Library inference software to double performance for Llama models and boost token generation by over 30x for providers including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Meta and Microsoft Azure is another sign of Nvidia's prevailing power.

“While much of what was announced had been somewhat anticipated, we think Nvidia’s continued full stack/platform innovation was once again showcased; NVDA is solidly in a league of its own,” Wells Fargo analysts commented on the event. “The rate of innovation on all fronts continues to impress and suggests a growing moat vs peers... We were hoping for more proof points for total addressable market (TAM) expansion and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) advantages but what is clear is the scale and strength of NVDA’s offerings across hardware/software and vertical domains”, Jefferies said. “Nothing hugely surprising given all the pre-event speculation, but we still thought it sounded good. The roadmap looks really solid, and their capability gap vs competitors across their entire massive stack continues to widen,” according to Bernstein investment house.

Shiba Inu (SHIB) is down 2.3% to $0.00001265 this week, underperforming the broader crypto market, where Bitcoin (BTC) is up 2.9% to $85,150. Despite the decline, SHIB appears to be stabilizing after falling to $0.00001071 last week, near the key support level of $0.00001000.

The altcoin is attempting to recover as market sentiment improves, driven by optimism following the Federal Reserve’s dovish stance shift on Wednesday. If the positive momentum in the crypto market continues, SHIB could see a stronger rebound in the coming weeks.

EOS (EOS) is surging by 20.1% to $0.5729 this week, significantly outperforming the broader market, where Bitcoin (BTC) is up 1.0% to $83,534. The sharp rally comes after the token announced its rebranding to Vaulta on Tuesday, marking a major shift aimed at “realizing the vision of Web3 banking.” The transition, which includes a token swap, is expected to be completed by the end of May, although the timeline remains subject to change.

Yves La Rose, founder and CEO of the Vaulta Foundation, emphasized that this move represents more than just a name change. He described Vaulta as the result of years of planning, strategic development, and careful design. The announcement triggered an immediate 30.0% surge in EOS prices to $0.6639, the highest level since February 21. While prices have since retreated, it is crucial for them to hold above the $0.5000 support level. Maintaining this level could sustain the uptrend, potentially pushing prices toward $0.7000 in the near future.

All three major indicators of Wall Street bounced since the beginning of the week, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (+0.85%) leading the recovery party on March 17. This may reflect hopes for increasingly favourable conditions for the domestic U.S. manufacturing business against cross-border tariff war fears, complemented by supposedly soft signals from the Dollar-based borrowing costs regulator at the Federal Reserve meeting onn Wednesday night. The chances of any  rate move this time are close to zero, but the majority of the open market committee could mention easing inflationary pressures to set their rate path projections a step lower for the rest of the year, which could be enough to improve the overall sentiment.

Besides the recent normalization of both consumer and producer price dynamics, the central bankers may use an opportunity to join White House officials in touting the progress in egg prices halving since January peak. The Daily National Shell Egg Index just indicated that the cost of a dozen Large White eggs, the commonly purchased variety in the U.S., has fallen to $3.45 after peaking at as much as $6.55 per dozen in the end of January. Fast measures to increase imports helped against soaring egg prices, which had escalated before due to a bird flu outbreak, with many household budgets being affected even to form a focal point of political discourse.

The S&P 500 broad market barometer was able to touch 5,700 points on the rebound after a dip in the direct vicinity of the 5,500 psychological barrier. The Wall Street predictably found a strong support there, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 remained a weak link as it has not gone through the 20,000 resistance area. Investors may be caught in a pincer-like movement of selling too fast rallies in particular stocks while buying any more dips in the S&P 500 futures, day by day, balancing between these two significant boundaries for the two specific Wall Street indicators until the accumulation of micro drivers leads to cumulative breakout effects.

In this regard, the Fed meeting's outcome may not be so much in focus, compared to Nvidia's annual GTC conference for developers in San Jose, California. Exhibits are scheduled for launching the day before the Fed, going to give further insight into demand for its cutting-edge AI Blackwell chips. Nvidia promised the event would be "bigger and better than ever", yet markets want to witness this magic in figures of contracts and technical characteristics. GTC passes for Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang address as well as over 1000 sessions and hands-on training, are sold out. All this splendour of engineering thoughts will stretch out over the entire week and can significantly affect prices of Nvidia stock, which in turn is a bellwether not only for the technological segment of Wall Street.

However, we got a persistent impression that an even stronger recovery jump at the end of the currently corrective phase on Wall Street is only a matter of a short or a little bit longer time. All leading research houses are speaking with one voice on this, usually maintaining their 6,500 to 6,850 targets for the S&P 500 index through 2025, with some reputable analysts raising the bar even higher. Whose forecast stands out the most from the set of other bets is Oppenheimer group of analysts, as it keeps 7,100 as a guideline.

Among other views, a fresh UBS note for clients was remarkable, saying that markets will mount a comeback as soon as "in coming weeks" on partially "lifting trade policy uncertainty", especially when taking into consideration that the last "foray" into correction territory was "unusually quick". They also believe it would be "politically counterproductive for the Trump administration to pursue policies that risk pushing the economy into recession", so that it may start to clarify "perhaps shortly after the Trump administration announces its plans for “reciprocal” tariffs on April 2". UBS analysts calculated that, historically, for investors who normally bought after stocks have fallen 10%, the average S&P 500 return over the next 3, 6, and 12 months is 8%, 13%, and 19%, respectively.