KEY POINTS
- The S&P 500 closed at 7,563.63 and the Nasdaq at 26,917.47 on May 28, both fresh all-time highs, as AI-linked earnings from Dell and Snowflake powered the tech sector.
- A combination of blockbuster AI server revenue at Dell (up 757% year-over-year) and Snowflake's best single-day gain ever gave traders confidence that the AI capex cycle is accelerating, not fading.
- Futures point to a muted open on May 29, with S&P futures down 0.07% and Nasdaq futures off 0.21%; the GDP second estimate and weekly jobless claims will set the tone for Friday's session.
The S&P 500 closed at a fresh all-time high of 7,563.63 on Wednesday, gaining 0.58%, while the Nasdaq Composite surged 0.91% to 26,917.47 — both indexes also printing intraday records. The Dow Jones Industrial Average barely participated, adding just 0.05% to finish at 50,668.97, a split that underscored how thoroughly Big Tech and the AI trade are driving this market.
The session had every reason to stall. The April PCE inflation report landed at 3.8% year-over-year, the hottest reading in nearly three years. A fabricated Iranian peace memorandum briefly whipsawed oil and equities before the White House dismissed it as fiction. Yet none of it stuck. By the close, buyers had pushed the S&P past its prior May 27 record with conviction, driven almost entirely by earnings quality in the artificial intelligence infrastructure stack.
Dell's $16 Billion Quarter Changes the Math
Dell Technologies reported Q1 fiscal 2027 revenue of $43.8 billion, an 88% year-over-year leap, but the headline number almost understates what happened underneath. AI-optimized server revenue hit $16.1 billion for the quarter, a 757% year-over-year explosion that sent shares up 38% after hours. Management raised full-year AI server guidance to $60 billion and lifted the total revenue outlook to $167 billion at the midpoint, up nearly 50% from last year. A $9.7 billion Pentagon contract added fuel, signaling that sovereign AI demand is now a material revenue stream, not a slide-deck talking point.
The read-through matters for the entire hardware supply chain. If Dell is shipping this kind of volume, Nvidia, Broadcom, and the power infrastructure names all have a higher floor under their forward estimates. Fund managers who trimmed tech exposure during the April volatility now face a classic fear-of-missing-out setup heading into June.
Snowflake's Best Day Ever
Snowflake posted Q1 product revenue of $1.33 billion, up 34% year-over-year, and raised full-year product revenue guidance from 27% to 31% growth. Shares ripped 36.5% in a single session — the stock's largest one-day gain since its 2020 IPO. The net revenue retention rate of 126% and remaining performance obligations of $9.21 billion (up 38%) told a clear story: enterprise AI workloads are landing on Snowflake's platform faster than Wall Street modeled. Non-GAAP operating margin expanded 300 basis points to 12%, silencing the perennial criticism that cloud data companies can grow but never profit.
The broader message from both reports is that AI spending is not decelerating. If anything, the demand curve is steepening as hyperscalers, governments, and enterprises all compete for GPU capacity and the data infrastructure to make it useful.
What the Tape Says About Breadth
Despite the index-level records, breadth was mediocre. The Dow's 0.05% gain reflects the reality that non-tech sectors remain range-bound. Healthcare, consumer staples, and utilities were flat to slightly negative. The advance-decline line has narrowed over the past two weeks, a pattern that historically can persist for months during AI-driven momentum phases but eventually demands resolution. Traders watching market internals should note the divergence without fighting the trend.
Thursday's pre-market futures suggest a cooling-off. S&P futures traded down 5.25 points to 7,576.50, Nasdaq futures slipped 63 points to 30,244, and Dow futures dipped 19 points. The Q1 GDP second estimate, revised down to 1.6% from 2.0%, and weekly initial claims will set the early tone. A weaker GDP print could paradoxically support equities by reinforcing the narrative that the Fed will not hike, while a hot claims number could revive the inflation worry that Wednesday's PCE data planted. The June 16-17 FOMC meeting is the next major macro catalyst, and every data point between now and then will be read through that lens.
