Chipmaker Nvidia overtook Apple (AAPL) as the world's most valuable company on Friday. Nvidia briefly reached a market valuation of $3.53tn (￡2.72tn), which was slightly ahead of Apple's $3.52tn, according to Reuters.
However, Nvidia's share price rises eased to close the session up 0.8%, giving the company a market capitalisation of $3.47tn at the end of the week. This put it back behind Apple, with the stock ending Friday's session up 0.4%, holding onto that market valuation of nearly $3.52tn.
Earnings releases from tech giants will take centre stage in markets this week, as five of the Magnificent Seven behemoths are set to report: Alphabet, Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL).
While Nvidia is only scheduled to release its third quarter earnings on Wednesday 20 October, there is still plenty of investor anticipation over its next report, as demand for its AI chips drives the stock higher.
Goldman Sachs managing director Toshiya Hari told Yahoo Finance that he’s keeping in mind heading into the earnings results: the demand environment around Nvidia’s products and its strength beyond AI training in inferencing that support the chipmaker's growth is strong and sustainable.
“We do expect upside from here” Hari said of Nvidia's share price ahead of its earnings report.
Shares were up nearly 1% in pre-market trading on Monday morning.
Google-parent Alphabet will kick off this week's Magnificent 7 earnings release, when it reports on Tuesday 29 October.
Reuters reported that Alphabet is likely to report its slowest revenue growth in four quarters this week, as it faces competition that has put pressure on its search business and YouTube ad spending.
In the second quarter, Alphabet posted 14% revenue growth year-on-year to $84.7bn, while operating income came in at $27.4bn, with margin growth of 32%.
Mark Mahaney, Evercore ISI senior managing director and head of internet research, told Yahoo Finance that the top factor in Alphabet's results "starts with search and it probably ends with search."
Mahaney said he would be watching to see if company maintain its double-digit search revenue growth and also stressed the importance of guidance.
Alphabet's Google has been facing regulatory headwinds recently. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) said earlier this month that it was considering whether to recommend the break up of Google to rein in its dominance in the search engine market.
While Alphabet shares are down more than 4% over the last three months, the stock is still up 18.5% year-to-date.
Oil prices slid on Monday morning, after Israel's retaliatory attack on Iran over the weekend avoided its refining facilities. This eased concerns of a disruption to supply and of further escalation of conflict in the Middle East.
Brent crude futures were down 5.5% to $71.87 a bon Monday morning, while while US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) (CL=F) were down 6% to $67.47.
This weighed on the share prices of oil majors Shell and (BP.L), which were both down more than 2%, leading the UK's main FTSE 100 (^FTSE) index lower, which was 0.25% in the red.
Both BP and Shell are set to release their latest company results this week, starting with the former on Tuesday, with the latter reporting on Thursday.
The two companies issued third-quarter guidance earlier this month, warning of weaker margins. Investors will be looking for more detail on these initial figures when the two oil majors release their results in full this week.
Deutsche Bank's team of analysts said in a note on Monday morning: "Over 40 million early votes have already been cast and the latest polls continue to show a very tight race."
They highlighted that the FiveThirtyEight opinion polling website average gives Harris a 1.5 percentage point (pp) lead in national polls, "but with a 0.6pp lead for former president Trump on average across the seven swing states, all of which see leads of less than 2pp for either candidate".
Meanwhile, the the betting average from polling aggregator RealClearPolitics now has Trump with a 61% likelihood of victory.
"That’s the highest it’s been since president [Joe] Biden dropped out of the race in July, though it has largely stabilised in the past week," said Deutsche Bank's analysts.
Shares in Philips tumbled 17.5% on Monday, after the Dutch health-tech company delivered weak third-quarter results.
Philips posted group sales of €4.4bn (￡3.7bn) for the quarter, which was flat on a comparable basis.
The company's comparable order intake fell by 2%, which it said was due to a decline in China.
Roy Jakobs, CEO of Royal Philips, said: "In the quarter, demand from hospitals and consumers in China further deteriorated, while we continue to see solid growth in other regions. We have adjusted our full-year sales outlook to reflect the continued impact from China."
