High-beta US stocks surged, with Snowflake rising 26% and Tesla nearly 8% intraday, fueled by AI earnings reports and Waller's dovish stance, igniting risk appetite.

On Thursday, September 3rd, Eastern Time, risk appetite in the US stock market rebounded significantly, with high-beta growth stocks becoming the most eye-catching assets on the market.

During the session, all three major U.S. stock indexes rose by more than 1%, while Snowflake, a leading AI data cloud provider that just released strong earnings, once surged by nearly 26%. Bloom Energy, a beneficiary of the AI infrastructure boom, rose by nearly 10%. Tesla rose by nearly 8% before holding its Cybercab launch event, and cryptocurrency concept stocks such as Strategy, a major Bitcoin holder, saw double-digit gains.

Behind this round of high-beta stock price increases are twofold: on one hand, Dell Technologies and Snowflake successively announced better-than-expected results, strengthening market confidence in AI infrastructure and enterprise AI demand; on the other hand, Federal Reserve Governor Waller released relatively dovish policy signals, stating that if August inflation data continues to improve, he is inclined to support maintaining the current interest rate. Market expectations for a September rate hike have subsequently cooled significantly, and US Treasury yields have fallen, opening up upside potential for high-valuation, high-volatility growth stocks.

However, the AI deal isn't a "one-size-fits-all" affair. While Broadcom's AI semiconductor revenue surged 221% year-over-year in the third fiscal quarter, exceeding all expectations, its stock price fell nearly 6.8% intraday because its fourth fiscal quarter revenue guidance was slightly below market expectations and its AI revenue guidance was only slightly above. This also means that after the previous sharp rise, the market's expectations for AI companies to realize profits are further increasing.

Dell fires the first shot: AI server orders hit a record high, prompting a significant upward revision of its full-year guidance.

The fundamental catalyst for this round of market rally began with Dell Technologies' earnings report released after the market closed on Tuesday.

Dell reported strong second-quarter revenue of $47 billion, a 58% year-over-year increase; non-GAAP earnings per share were $7.04, a 203% year-over-year increase. More importantly, the company's AI-optimized server business continued its explosive growth: second-quarter revenue reached $16.4 billion, a 100% year-over-year increase, with AI server orders reaching a record $60.9 billion and a backlog of $95 billion at the end of the quarter.

Driven by accelerating demand for AI, Dell has significantly raised its fiscal year 2027 guidance: full-year revenue is expected to increase from $167 billion to $192 billion, and revenue from AI-optimized servers is expected to increase from $60 billion to $74 billion; non-GAAP earnings per share guidance is also raised from $17.90 to $25.50.

These figures send a fairly direct signal to the market: AI capital expenditure has not cooled down significantly and is continuing to spread to the areas of servers, networks, and data center infrastructure.

This also underscores the underlying theme of Thursday's high-beta stock rally—investors are rediscovering more resilient beneficiaries in the AI investment cycle, rather than just traditional large-cap tech stocks.

Dell shares rose 7.8% to a daily high on Thursday, nearly 24.9% higher than Tuesday's close before the earnings report was released. This means that the stock price has risen nearly 25% cumulatively since the earnings report was released until Thursday's daily high.

Snowflake adds fuel to the fire: AI is becoming a new engine for software growth.

After the market closed on Wednesday, Snowflake, a leading AI data cloud provider, delivered a strong earnings report.

Snowflake's second-quarter product revenue reached $1.49 billion, a 37% year-over-year increase, exceeding market expectations. The company also raised its full-year product revenue guidance to $6.07 billion, up from the previous $5.84 billion.

More attention is being drawn to the significant acceleration of Snowflake's AI business. CEO Sridar Ramaswamy stated that AI has contributed approximately half of the recent growth acceleration. New products such as the AI programming assistant Cortex Code and the enterprise chat product CoWork are also experiencing rapid adoption. Reuters points out that demand for Snowflake's AI products has driven the company's overall growth acceleration and prompted at least 34 brokerages to raise their target prices.

The market reacted extremely positively: Snowflake surged more than 25.7%, or nearly 26%, to a new daily high, becoming one of the most eye-catching stocks of the day.

AI software trading also spread: ServiceNow hit a new daily high, rising 7.5% at one point; Salesforce hit a new daily high, rising 4.4% at one point; and Adobe hit a new daily high, rising nearly 4.8% at one point.

This means the market is trading on a broader logic than just "strong demand for AI servers": AI capital expenditures not only benefit hardware manufacturers such as Nvidia, Dell, and Broadcom, but may also increasingly translate into revenue growth for enterprise data, cloud computing, and software companies.

Broadcom's stock price keeps falling despite its strong performance: Market expectations for AI performance are getting higher and higher.

But while Snowflake ignited software stocks, Broadcom, which also released its earnings report after the market closed on Wednesday, presented a different story.

Broadcom reported revenue of approximately $29.6 billion in its third fiscal quarter, up 86% year-over-year; AI semiconductor revenue reached $16.7 billion, up 221% year-over-year and 54% quarter-over-quarter, with the company's performance significantly exceeding market expectations.

However, the stock price fell against the trend.

The reason is that the market is starting to focus on the next quarter.

Broadcom expects fourth-quarter revenue of approximately $34.8 billion, compared to market expectations of approximately $35 billion; the company expects fourth-quarter AI revenue of approximately $21.7 billion, continuing its rapid growth but only slightly exceeding market expectations.

As a result, Broadcom's stock price fell nearly 6.8% when it hit a new daily low in early trading on Thursday, before recovering more than half of its losses to close down less than 3%.

This scene is quite noteworthy: AI semiconductor revenue increased by 221% year-on-year, exceeding expectations, but the stock price plummeted.

This does not mean that the market has suddenly become bearish on AI. On the contrary, it reflects that the "threshold" for AI trading is getting higher and higher. For core AI companies whose valuations are already high, "exceeding expectations" may not be enough. The market needs to see stronger future guidance, higher growth certainty, and faster profit realization.

Waller sends a key signal: if inflation cooperates, he prefers to hold rates steady.

What truly fueled risk appetite on Thursday was the shift in expectations regarding the Federal Reserve's policy.

Federal Reserve Governor Waller said that if the August inflation data continues the improving trend of June and July, he would support maintaining the current interest rate level; however, if inflation rebounds significantly, he would still consider supporting a rate hike.

On the surface, Waller still retains the option of raising interest rates, but the market is more concerned about the change in his stance compared to before.

Nick Timiraos, a journalist dubbed the "new Fed mouthpiece," points out that Waller's policy stance has undergone a subtle shift: previously he was more concerned about inflation risks and supported raising interest rates; however, his latest remarks show that he now appears relatively more optimistic and, given continued supportive inflation data, is more inclined to keep interest rates unchanged.

This is especially important for the market.

Previously, Warsh's hawkish signals in his Jackson Hole speech had significantly pushed up short-term Treasury yields and caused the market to re-induce the risk of interest rate hikes; now, Waller's remarks have, to some extent, offset this tightening expectation.

Market pricing adjusted rapidly. During Thursday's trading session, traders' expectations for a 25 basis point rate hike in September fell from nearly 70% the previous day to about 50%.

The 10-year US Treasury yield also fell from its recent high of nearly 4.8%, dropping to about 4.75% during the session.

For high-beta growth stocks, this is equivalent to gaining a tailwind in both fundamentals and valuation.

From Snowflake to Robinhood: High-beta trades are spreading across the board.

With the upward pressure on interest rates temporarily easing, funds have begun to spread from core AI assets to targets with higher volatility and greater elasticity.

Cryptocurrency stocks were particularly prominent. Robinhood surged nearly 17% to a new daily high, Strategy rose 15.4%, and Coinbase gained 11.9%. Bitcoin's return to the vicinity of $80,000 further reinforced this risk-on trading sentiment.

Meanwhile, Tesla rose nearly 7.6% to a new daily high, Meta rose nearly 4.5% to a new daily high, and Nvidia rose nearly 2.7% to a new daily high.

This is no longer just a "AI earnings report rally," but is beginning to exhibit typical characteristics of a high-beta risk appetite regression .

Tesla's rise was also catalyzed by its own events – the company was scheduled to hold a Cybercab-related press conference that day, and the market expected that AI narratives such as autonomous driving and Robotaxi might become new valuation drivers.

The narrative of power shortages for AI data centers is heating up again, with Bloom Energy shares rising nearly 10% intraday.

Another high-beta stock worth watching is Bloom Energy.

The stock rose more than 9.7% at its intraday high, significantly outperforming the broader market and some similar fuel cell stocks.

The market is not just trading on clean energy in the traditional sense, but rather on the power bottleneck of AI data centers .

With the rapid expansion of AI computing infrastructure, data centers are increasingly demanding stable power, while grid expansion and connection in some parts of the United States take a considerable amount of time. Bloom Energy's on-site fuel cell power generation solutions are therefore seen by some investors as a potential beneficiary of the power shortage problem faced by AI data centers.

The analysis by 247 Wall St also points out that an important background to Bloom Energy's rise on Thursday was that the market as a whole entered a risk-on mode, and investors refocused on the theme of power demand for AI data centers.

Therefore, Bloom Energy's stock price actually represents another AI trading chain:

AI computing power expansion → Data center power demand surge → Power grid bottleneck → On-site power generation demand → High-beta power stocks attract capital inflows.

This logic also explains why, on Thursday, market funds did not remain in AI chip giants such as Nvidia, but instead spread further to highly volatile targets such as AI infrastructure, power, and even fuel cells.

Waller's shift to a dovish stance is merely a catalyst; Friday's non-farm payrolls report will be the next test.

As of Thursday's trading session, this high-beta frenzy cannot be simply interpreted as the Federal Reserve having shifted to easing.

Waller's core condition remains "if inflation continues to improve in August." The August CPI will be released on September 11, just before the FOMC meeting on September 15-16, making it a key indicator for determining the policy direction in September.

Meanwhile, the U.S. jobs data released on Friday will continue to influence market sentiment toward the Federal Reserve.

Therefore, a more accurate description of Thursday's market trading is not "the rate cut trade has fully returned," but rather: the rate hike trade has cooled down.

After strong earnings reports from Dell and Snowflake reignited confidence in AI growth, Waller's policy statements temporarily eased market concerns about further tightening by the Federal Reserve. As a result, funds began to flow back into high-beta assets such as Snowflake, Robinhood, Strategy, Coinbase, Tesla, Bloom Energy, and Palantir.

However, Broadcom's decline also serves as a reminder to investors that while risk appetite can quickly return, the valuation threshold for AI trading will not be lowered as a result.

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