How Nvidia Is Powering the Market Turnaround

Caitlin McCabe (0:00)

This episode is brought to you by Genspark, your all-in-one AI workspace. Work like a boss. President Trump signs legislation to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. Plus, the White House drafts a peace plan for ending the war in Ukraine with major concessions from Kiev. And we unpack whether Nvidia's earnings are enough to soothe investors' recent jitters.

Seema Shah (0:27)

Nvidia has really delivered. It continues to feed the beast. But it's important to say that the stakes keep rising. As we look forward to the next couple of months, I would expect these kind of potholes to persist where the market just keeps leading to hear that these companies can continue to deliver on these very, very high expectations.

Caitlin McCabe (0:45)

It's Thursday, November 20th. I'm Caitlin McCabe for The Wall Street Journal, and here's the AM Edition of What's News. The top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

We begin in Washington, where President Trump announced on social media that he signed the bill to release the Epstein files. Now that the legislation is signed, Attorney General Pam Bondi has 30 days to make the unclassified documents available. And while focus will now shift to the release of the files, the fallout from emails already released continues. Last night, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers announced that he is taking leave from teaching at Harvard. Earlier this week, Summers told his students, including Lola Diasentis, who filmed him, that he would step back from public commitments, but would complete teaching for the current semester.

Larry Summers (1:42)

Some of you will have seen my statement of LeGrette expressing my shame with respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein, and that I've said that I'm going to step back, I'll put that there for you, but for our time, but I think it's very important to fulfill my teaching obligations.

Caitlin McCabe (2:03)

But a university representative confirmed yesterday that summers will not complete the semester. Harvard is also conducting a review of individuals included in the newly released Epstein documents. President Trump has said he'll meet with New York Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani at the White House tomorrow, at Mamdani's request. Mamdani discussed the White House meeting on MS Now with Chris Hayes after Trump posted about the request on social media yesterday.

Zoran Mamdani (2:30)

We did reach out to the White House and my team reached out because of a commitment that I made to New Yorkers that I would be willing to meet with anyone and everyone so long as it was to the benefit of the eight and a half million people who call the city home and their struggle to afford the most expensive city in the United States of America.

Caitlin McCabe (2:43)

Trump has repeatedly criticized the Democratic Socialist threatening to cut off federal funding to the city if Mamdani was elected. Mamdani is set to take office as New York Mayor on January 1st. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage that previously made the case that vaccines don't cause autism now says they might. During his confirmation hearing, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had reassured Senator Bill Cassidy that the CDC would not remove such statements from their website. But the revised webpage now says studies haven't ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism and that studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities. More than 25 peer-reviewed scientific articles have shown no link between autism and the MMR vaccine. And earlier this year, a Danish study of more than 1.2 million children found no link between aluminum in vaccines and neurodevelopmental harm, including autism. The Trump administration has drafted a 28-point peace plan that calls for Ukraine to make major territorial concessions to Russia and drop demands for a peacekeeping force. The plan resurfaces ideas that Kiev has already rejected. And as Lawrence Norman, our Deputy Brussels Bureau Chief, explains, it's considered a non-starter for European allies too.

Joe Flint (4:11)

The European Foreign Ministers are meeting this morning. And it's very clear that they see this plan as some form of Ukrainian capitulation. Now, it should be said that the Europeans have not been briefed on this plan yet.

Seema Shah (4:26)

So they're going to some extent on what we and others are writing about this. But there is a real pushback. There is no doubt what President Trump wants. He's made it very, very clear on many occasions, I want this war to end. The question is, how does it end? And there doesn't seem to have been any real clear clarity from the administration on what they believe should happen and shouldn't.

Caitlin McCabe (4:52)

While Putin's spokesperson said Moscow wasn't aware of any plan, we understand it came about in talks between Trump aides and Kremlin confidant Kirill Dmitriev. The peace plan marks a shift in the White House's position since September, when the president mused publicly about providing long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine and said that Kiev was in a position to win back all of its lost territory. Coming up, are Nvidia's blockbuster results last night enough to turn a recent market sell-off around? We explore that question and more after the break. This episode is powered by Genspark, your all-in-one AI workspace.