Stock Market Live November 20: S&P 500 (VOO) Surges on Strong Jobs, Nvidia Reports
Quick Read
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AI bellwether Nvidia reported an earnings beat last night and gave strong guidance, encouraging investors.
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US Bureau of Labor Statistics says the economy added 119,000 jobs in September.
Live Updates
Is Ford's Future Up in Smoke?
Bad news for Ford (NYSE: F | NDAQ Price Prediction) investors today. News site CNYCentral is reporting there’s a four-alarm fire blazing at the Novelis aluminum plant in Scriba, N.Y., which supplies 40% of the aluminum sheets used by automakers in the United States — and is Ford’s biggest aluminum supplier for its F-150 trucks.
Nasdaq Upgraded
Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Cyprys upgraded S&P 500 component company Nasdaq OMX Group ((Nasdaq: NDAQ) Nasdaq: NDAQ) to overweight with a $110 price target this morning.
“Cyclical tailwinds [are] set to accelerate revenue growth across Solutions businesses into 2026‑27,” says Cyprys, and “durable underlying secular tailwinds persist … We see NDAQ as an attractive play on capital markets recovery plus a business transformation story on their shift into higher quality, more recurring revenue streams in large addressable markets (data, index, reg tech software solutions, anti‑financial crime).”
Nasdaq stock is up nearly 2% on the upgrade, while the Voo’s gain has been cut to 1.2%.
Warner Music Hits a Sour Note
Not all the news can be good, of course. Warner Music Group (Nasdaq: WMG) missed by 16 cents on its Q4 earnings report this morning. Still, even Warner’s bad news wasn’t all bad. Revenue for the quarter was $1.9 billion, and nearly $200 million more than Wall Street analysts had predicted.
Investors are still selling off Warner Music stock by about 4% though.
The Voo is adding to its gains, now up 1.7% in early trading.
This article will be updated throughout the day, so check back often for more daily updates.
Everything that could go right to drive the stock market higher today, appears to be going right, and the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) is up 1.5% premarket — that’s the long and the short of how things stand Thursday morning.
Last night, Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) beat by a nickel on its fiscal Q3 2026 earnings report, reporting $1.30 per share in profit and sales of $57 billion — $2.1 billion more than Wall Street expected. Nvidia went on to guide investor higher on Q4 as well, saying revenue will be $65 billion, plus or minus, which if true will far exceed analysts’ expected $61.6 billion.
Nvidia stock is up more than 5% this morning.
Just a few hours later, the U.S. government did its part to keep the stock market rally going, as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 119,000 new jobs created in September. This reversed the 4,000 jobs lost in August, and was more than 50,000 jobs economists had predicted.
BLS also noted that average hourly earnings increased 3.8% year over year.
Granted, all this is old data from before the government shutdown, and none of it tells us how much damage the shutdown itself did to the economy, to wages, or to the job market. But for today, it’s all more than enough good news to send the stock market higher.
Earnings
In non-Nvidia earnings news, S&P 500 component company Walmart (NYSE: WMT) beat Q3 earnings by two cents this morning, reporting a $0.62 per share profit and sales of $179.5 billion, about $2 billion more than analysts were expecting. Walmart also raised guidance for full-year earnings to a range of from $2.58 to $2.63.
Walmart stock is up 3% premarket.
S&P 500 component Jacobs (NYSE: J) rounded out the morning’s good news with an eight-cent earnings beat. The engineering and construction firm earned $1.75 per share in its fiscal Q4, and revenue was $3.2 billion, $50 million more than expected. Guidance for full-year fiscal 2026 is for $6.90 to $7.30 in profit, also ahead of forecasts.
Jacobs stock is up more than 3%.
Joel South covers large-cap stocks, dividend investing, and major market trends, with a focus on earnings analysis, valuation, and turning complex data into actionable insights for investors.
He brings more than 15 years of experience as an investor and financial journalist, including 12 years at The Motley Fool, where he served as an investment analyst, Bureau Chief, and later led the Fool.com investing news desk. He has also co-hosted an investing podcast and appeared across TV and radio discussing market trends.
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