Stocks were mixed to start the new week. A big rally in energy stocks kept the Dow Jones Industrial Average above water, though the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite weren't so resilient.
Indeed, the Dow rose 0.7% to 39,411 on strength in Chevron (CVX), marking the 30-stock average's fifth-straight gain. The oil stock added 2.6% as U.S. crude futures climbed 1.1% to $81.63 per barrel.
However, the S&P 500 (-0.3% at 5,447) and the Nasdaq (-1.1% at 17,496) each finished lower as mega-cap chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) continued to slide. NVDA ended today down 6.7% and is now in correction territory after falling nearly 13% from its June 18 all-time closing high. This late-June slide has chopped $432 billion from Nvidia's market value, which is more than the entire market cap of credit card giant Mastercard (MA, +0.5%).
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Even with these recent losses, NVDA has still more than doubled on a year-to-date basis and BofA Securities analyst Vivek Arya thinks any volatility will be short-lived.
For one, we are only in year two of what could be a three-to-five-year deployment cycle for generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) hardware, the analyst says. Additionally, Arya expects strong demand for Nvidia's Blackwell AI platform when it is launched later this year.
And "unlike the 'dot-com boom' that was funded by risky debt-taking, GenAI deployment is a mission-critical race between some of the best-funded (cloud) customers," Arya says, adding that NVDA remains a "top pick" at BofA.
Target gains on new Shopify deal
In other single-stock news, Target (TGT, +2.4%) said it teamed up with Shopify (SHOP, -1.1%) to boost the discount retailer's e-commerce sales.
While terms of the deal were not disclosed, the partnership will allow companies working with Shopify to sell items on Target Plus, its third-party marketplace. The retailer will also put certain popular items in its brick-and-mortar stores, one executive told CNBC.
Affirm could double on Apple partnership, analyst says
Elsewhere, Affirm (AFRM) shares jumped 12.8% after Mizuho Securities analyst Dan Dolev said the buy-now-pay-later firm's (BNPL) new partnership with Apple (AAPL, +0.3%) could drive major upside both on and off the price charts. The deal, announced at Apple's WorldWide Developer Conference (WWDC) earlier this month, will allow Apple Pay users to access installment loans through Affirm.
"We estimate that the new Apple Pay + Affirm partnership could drive roughly $12 billion potential incremental BNPL opportunity to Affirm, or 35% incremental growth vs fiscal 2025 consensus volume estimates," Dolev wrote in a note to clients. The analyst has a Buy rating on Affirm and a Street-high $65 price target, representing implied upside of 93% to current levels.
EU accuses Apple of violating Digital Market Act
Apple, meanwhile, made its own headlines today after the European Union said the tech giant is blocking developers from offering customers other options outside of its App Store. The charges are the first to be filed under the EU's Digital Market Act, which was passed earlier this year and aims to protect competition in the digital space.
While Apple said in a statement that it is "confident our plan complies with the law," a verdict against the company could result in a fine equivalent to 10% of its global revenue.
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