US Markets Overnight: Cisco walks into the AI bar like it owns the place

US Markets Overnight reminded us of the dot com party in 1999

If you’d told the average punter back in January that the stock to lead an AI-driven, record-breaking session on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq would be the one Aussie investors mostly remember from the dot com era, you’d have copped a polite chuckle and maybe a free schooner. And yet here we are. The US session on Thursday, 14 May 2026, was an old-meets-new affair, with Cisco doing its best impression of a 1999 highlights reel and dragging the broader tech complex along with it. The Dow Jones reclaimed the 50,000 handle, the S&P 500 punched through 7,500 for the first time ever, and the AI trade, which had spent a couple of sessions sulking in the corner, came back with a vengeance.

Cisco leading the charge

The S&P 500 added 0.8% to finish at 7,501.24, a fresh all-time high and the first close above 7,500. The Nasdaq Composite jumped 0.9% to 26,635.22, also a record. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lifted 0.7% to 50,063.46, taking back the psychologically important 50,000 mark, with Cisco doing roughly half the heavy lifting. The Russell 2000 tagged along for a 0.6% gain, which is about as much enthusiasm as small caps can muster while the mega-cap circus is in town.

Over in the asset class everyone watches between sessions, US 10-year Treasury yields eased back to around 4.45%, which is what equities wanted to see after Wednesday’s mini-tantrum. Gold held its ground near US$4,705 an ounce, essentially flat after a frankly exhausting run higher. WTI crude steadied just above US$101 a barrel, pausing a recent advance as traders chewed over the latest twists in US-Iran diplomacy ahead of the Trump-Xi meeting. Bitcoin meanwhile slipped back toward US$79,500, because every record-breaking equity session apparently needs a contrarian in the room.

Nvidia limbers up, the rest tag along

The Magnificent 7 collectively pulled their weight, but the headline act was Nvidia, which surged about 4.5% to roughly US$235.63 ahead of next week’s earnings. Punters are clearly positioning for a beat-and-raise that justifies six months of “is it a bubble” headlines, and the read-through from Cisco’s eye-watering AI order book gave the bulls plenty to chew on. Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Amazon all participated in the rally without doing anything especially heroic, which is fine, sometimes a steady grind higher is exactly what the doctor ordered when valuations are this stretched.

Apple was the laggard today, finishing modestly lower as iPhone cycle chatter slowly turned constructive heading into the back half of the calendar year. Tesla, somewhat surprisingly given recent form, also closed slightly higher, trading near US$449 after spending much of the session in a tight range. There was no obvious catalyst, just a session where the rising tide lifted most boats, including the one Elon Musk keeps insisting is actually a robotics company. The market doesn’t seem to mind that pivot for now, though it remains to be seen whether June delivery numbers will play along.

The Foundry boys had a field day

The semis ripped. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, now up nearly 70% year-to-date, added another solid session as the AI capex narrative reasserted itself with vigour. Broadcom led the large-caps, pushing through fresh highs on the back of Cisco’s networking commentary, which essentially told the market that custom AI silicon and hyperscaler routing demand are still going gangbusters. AMD also had a strong day, helped along by its Q1 data centre revenue running at a 57% growth clip, a number that quietly puts paid to the idea that Nvidia’s moat is impenetrable.

ASML caught a bid as the EUV story remains the cleanest pick-and-shovel play in the space, while Qualcomm and Micron tagged along on cyclical optimism. Intel, ever the bridesmaid, eked out a small gain that nobody is going to write home about. The big sector theme is unchanged, AI infrastructure spend keeps surprising to the upside, and every analyst who’s been calling top since SOX crossed 5,000 is now hoping nobody pulls up their old notes.

Cerebras hits Nasdaq, Nasdaq loses its mind

If you were looking for evidence that the AI IPO window has been kicked clean off its hinges, look no further than Cerebras Systems, which made its Nasdaq debut on Thursday and promptly went vertical. The wafer-scale chip maker priced at US$185, above the already-bumped marketed range, raised US$5.55 billion in the process, and then watched its stock open at US$350, tag US$386 intraday, and settle at US$311.07. That’s a 68% pop on day one, a market cap of roughly US$95 billion by the closing bell, and the biggest US tech IPO since Uber backed itself into traffic in 2019. The book was reportedly more than 20 times oversubscribed, which tells you everything you need to know about how much capital is still looking for an Nvidia-shaped hole to fill. Whether Cerebras can actually deliver the hyperscaler revenue to justify a near-hundred-billion-dollar tag is a question for another quarter. For now, the punters are buying the story, the bankers are popping corks, and somewhere in Silicon Valley a dozen other AI infrastructure companies just updated their S-1 timelines.

Does this start to feel like a Deja Vu yet? If you’re old enough, like yours truly, it will.

One thing worth watching

Mark Wednesday, 20 May in the diary, because that’s when Nvidia reports its fiscal Q1 results. The bar is genuinely silly at this point. Consensus is calling for another round of triple-digit data centre growth, and the options market is implying a move of around 7% in either direction on the print. Given Jensen Huang’s recent China commentary and the ongoing export restrictions saga, the guidance update will matter more than the headline number. If Nvidia delivers and raises, the AI trade has another leg in it. If it merely meets, the bears finally get something to work with. Aussie investors holding tech ETFs or the local data centre names should be paying very close attention.