A stamp showing Batman (Getty Images)

Market Vigilantes

Nvidia crosses $5 trillion market cap in early trading as BATMMAAN stocks dominate the market

The eight BATMMAAN names are now worth nearly 40% of the S&P 500, as key AI players take flight once more.

10/29/25 6:07AM

Updated 11/5/25 3:05PM

It’s hardly as if investors need much of an excuse to bid up AI darlings this year, but yesterday Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sent out a pretty big Bat-Signal, telling an audience at the company’s GPU Technology Conference that orders for Nvidia’s Blackwell and early Rubin chips were above $500 billion through 2026, while announcing a bevy of new partnerships with top companies like Palantir, CrowdStrike, and Uber.

That news helped the world’s most valuable company finish the day up 5%, leaving the chip designer with an eye-watering $4.9 trillion market cap.

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Now, Nvidia is gaining once again on Wednesday — currently up 4.8% on heavy trading volumes after a slew of positive analyst coverage, with analysts at UBS bumping their price target for NVDA to $235 and Bank of America’s taking theirs to $275. The company has soared to new heights, with shares touching $210.69 as of 9:45 a.m. ET.

With 24.3 billion shares outstanding, per Bloomberg, that puts the chip designer’s market cap over $5.1 trillion. Some people may not consider the milestone marked officially until it closes above that figure, but for now, it is undeniably true: Nvidia is the first company in history to cross the $5 trillion threshold.

Nvidia’s ascent has been nothing short of remarkable, owing to the 2018 decision from Huang and co. to “bet the farm” on AI. As its data center revenues exploded, the company found itself with the right product, in the right place, at the right time. The company’s staggering market position saw it put up financial results that defied belief: triple-digit percentage growth, margins north of 50%, and all with a workforce the size of a small Ohio town — many of whom are now millionaires. Even being shut out of China due to simmering trade tensions hasn’t stopped the stock from soaring and leaving its Big Tech peers in the dust.

But, while Nvidia is undoubtedly the talisman of the AI trade, it’s hardly alone in profiting from it. With semiconductor giant Broadcom now worth more than $1.75 trillion itself, and given that it (for now) has a more direct contribution to the AI ecosystem than Tesla, I’ve argued before that the Magnificent 7 moniker needs updating to BATMMAAN — a collection of stocks (Mag 7 + Broadcom) that are now worth ~$24 trillion collectively.

That’s a level of market dominance that most investors have never seen before in their lifetimes. Indeed, if you’re buying a sensible market-tracking index like SPY or VOO, just as sage heads such as Warren Buffett might have advised you to do, you are now, implicitly, making a large bet that America’s technology complex will continue dominating in the field of AI, with BATMMAAN now representing nearly 40% of the S&P 500’s total market cap (which is some $61 trillion).

Increasingly, the argument can be made that the BATMMAAN names are really an AI mega-cap basket, with each individual company working hard to associate their story with that of the burgeoning technology:

Nvidia and Broadcom are at the very center of the AI trade, with their chips desired by hyperscalers the world over.
Microsoft is arguably next closest to the metal, with multiple points of exposure to the AI theme. Its Azure division, which provides cloud services, now operates more than 400 data centers across 70 regions — the largest footprint of any cloud provider, per Microsoft — with Azure’s annual revenue surpassing $75 billion over the summer. That’s not to mention, of course, that the company directly owns a huge chunk (27%) of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI directly, and has been pushing its “Copilot” family of tools into its core productivity software suite.
Amazon and Google also compete with Azure, via AWS and Google Cloud — and Alphabet has one of the strongest foundational models in Gemini, a product that’s had a breakthrough summer, and has a major update slated for release in December.
Meta has made some of the most high-profile investments in AI, poaching top AI talent with insane pay packages, and doubling down on its huge capital expenditures as the company builds out its AI infrastructure — which has already helped to propel its advertising machine to new heights.
Much of Tesla’s current market value is ascribed to its future bets on AI-powered autonomous driving and robots — a future which, as Sherwood’s Rani Molla points out, is really hard to build and increasingly expensive.
Apple, meanwhile is the one laggard in the group when it comes to embracing AI — something Wall Street has been willing to forget about in recent weeks after strong iPhone sales.

Interestingly, Broadcom is actually the best performing of the group this year, up 64%, even outpacing Nvidia.

The next test for the BATMMAAN names will be earnings, with five of the group reporting this week: Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet will be after the bell today, and we’ll get Apple and Amazon tomorrow.

Tasha Matsumoto

Stocks eke out a gain as inflation remains mild

The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 all posted weekly gains.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - DECEMBER 23: Benny the Bull, the Chicago Bulls mascot, dresses as Santa Claus in the game against the Milwaukee Bucks during the second half at the United Center on December 23, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois

Luke Kawa10h

Microsoft is in talks to shift its custom chip business to Broadcom from Marvell, The Information reports

The Information’s profile of custom chip specialist Broadcom includes this tidbit:

“And now Microsoft is also in talks to design future chips with Broadcom, which would involve Microsoft switching its business from Marvell, another maker of custom chips, according to one person involved in the discussions.”

Shares of Marvell Technology briefly dipped into the red after this report hit the wires, but then pared that drop to trade modestly higher. The company codesigns the Maia line of ASICs for Microsoft that are custom-built for Azure. Microsoft is its second-biggest hyperscaler client, behind Amazon.

Marvell tumbled on a ho-hum earnings report earlier this week before going on to surge after CEO Matt Murphy offered a $10 billion revenue target for its upcoming fiscal year, which was above analysts’ expectations.

Perhaps this is a bit of Information fatigue, given how Microsoft was quick to deny a report from the outlet earlier this week about how the tech giant lowered its sales targets for AI products.

Luke Kawa11h

Memory stocks soar as AI supporting cast repairs damage from steep November declines

There’s not much rhyme or reason to it, but memory stocks are ending the week with a stellar showing.

Shares of high-bandwidth memory specialist Micron, hard disk drive sellers Seagate Technology Holdings and Western Digital, and flash memory company Sandisk are all rising today.

Three of these stocks dropped about 20% in November as credit risk seeping into AI and a downturn in speculative momentum stocks weighed on the theme, with Sandisk faring the worst.

Micron, Western Digital, and Seagate have all since rebounded strongly and are about 5% or less from reclaiming all-time highs, while Sandisk has made up the least ground.

While GPUs (and, more recently, TPUs) get most of the headlines, data centers also need a boatload of memory chips that store information and feed it to those processors.

Nia Warfield14h

Ulta soars as Q3 beat sparks flood of price target hikes

Ulta’s latest makeover is happening on Wall Street. Shares leapt Friday morning as analysts hiked their price targets after the beauty retailer topped Q3 estimates and raised its full-year outlook after the bell Thursday.

Earnings came in at $5.14 per share, handily beating analyst expectations of $4.64. Revenue also topped estimates at $2.86 billion, compared with the $2.72 billion expected. Ulta has benefited from resilient beauty spending, even as consumers pull back elsewhere and hunt more aggressively for discounts.

Ulta now expects full-year net sales of about $12.3 billion, up from a prior forecast of $12.0 billion to $12.1 billion. The retailer also lifted its earnings outlook to $25.20 to $25.50 per share, up from $23.85 to $24.30 previously. This marks Ulta’s second straight quarter of hiking its sales and profit forecast. Analysts are taking note:

Goldman Sachs maintained its “buy” rating and raised its price target to $642 from $584.
DA Davidson maintained its “buy” rating and raised its price target to $650 from $625.
JPMorgan maintained its “outperform” rating and raised its price target to $647 from $606.
Baird maintained its “outperform” rating and hiked its price target to $670 from $600.
Telsey Advisory maintained its “outperform” rating and raised its price target to $640 from $610.
Piper Sandler maintained its “outperform” rating and raised its price target to $615 from $590.
Canaccord Genuity maintained its “neutral” rating and raised its price target to $674 from $654.

Max Knoblauch15h

Southwest cuts its earnings outlook on lost revenue due to government shutdown

Another big four airline has put a price tag on the 43-day government shutdown.

Southwest Airlines on Friday said lower revenue due to a temporary decline in demand during the shutdown, together with higher fuel costs, will ding its annual earnings before interest and taxes by between $100 million and $300 million. The carrier lowered its full-year EBIT outlook to $500 million, down from a prior range of $600 million to $800 million.

According to Southwest’s filing, bookings have returned to previous expectations following the end of the shutdown. Its shares dipped down about 1% in premarket trading.

The carrier joins Delta Air Lines in assigning a cost to the government closure. Earlier this week, Delta said the shutdown would cost it $200 million in the fourth quarter.