US Markets Overnight: Snowflake breaks the SaaSpocalypse

The vibe check: The Middle East truce is extended!

In US markets overnight there was a moment on Thursday, May 28 US time, when it felt like the whole narrative around software stocks quietly exhaled. Snowflake, the cloud data platform that has spent the better part of 2026 being used as a punching bag in the great AI-disruption panic, reported blowout first-quarter numbers after Wednesday’s close and the stock surged 36% in a single session, its best day ever. That one result reframed the entire “SaaSpocalypse” trade, the fear that AI-native tools from companies like Anthropic would hollow out legacy enterprise software. For one day at least, the data said otherwise.

Meanwhile, US markets overnight also caught a tailwind from rumours of an Iran-US ceasefire extension, though those whispers have become something of a daily ritual and traders have learned to hold them loosely. Microsoft put in a clean 3.5% gain after separately announcing it would deploy in-house AI coding models, and Marvell Technology, fresh off its own earnings beat after Wednesday’s close, added another few percent on top of a year-to-date move that has already more than doubled the stock. Not a bad Thursday.

New all-time-highs again!

S&P 500: +0.6% to 7,563.63, a fresh record close. The broad market kept pace with tech, which is less obvious than it sounds on a day when a handful of names drove so much of the action. Nasdaq Composite: +0.9% to 26,917.47, also a new all-time high. That tells you the software rally was real enough to move the index, not just a Snowflake-specific event. Dow Jones Industrial Average: +0.05% to 50,669: essentially flat, weighed down by the usual suspects in industrials while tech dragged it just into the green. Russell 2000: The small caps managed a modest gain of around 0.7% intraday, but closed broadly flat, a reminder that the AI rally remains a large-cap phenomenon. The SOX semiconductor index added around 1%, consistent with a session where chip-adjacent software (Snowflake uses Amazon’s in-house Trainium silicon) was the catalyst.

Bitcoin fell around 2% to approximately $74,200. The crypto crowd is apparently less enthused about Iran peace rumours than equity traders. Spot gold was broadly flat near $4,480. WTI crude settled around $89 per barrel on a day when ceasefire hopes briefly knocked oil lower before renewed US-Iran military exchanges pushed it back up. The US 10-year Treasury yield pushed back above 4.5% after five straight sessions lower. Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari gave a speech reiterating that inflation remains too high, which was not what bond bulls wanted to hear.

Snowflakes in May

The US markets overnight Magnificent 7 breakdown shows Microsoft ($427, +3.5%) was the standout, surging on news that it plans to deploy its own in-house AI coding models inside Azure. For a stock that has spent most of 2026 grinding sideways while the market celebrated everyone else’s AI story, a 3.5% session is notable, and it makes sense, given the Snowflake result demonstrated that enterprise software demand is accelerating, not collapsing.

Amazon ($274, +0.8%) benefited directly from the Snowflake news: the $6 billion compute deal Snowflake announced is with Amazon Web Services, which is a material signal about where hyperscaler AI capex is landing. Apple ($313, +0.5%) was quietly green, like Meta at $635, which was essentially flat with a rounding-error gain. Both had a nothing session which, given Meta’s year-to-date run, is almost a relief.

Alphabet ($386, +0.3%) ticked up; the Snowflake result is arguably more positive for Alphabet’s Google Cloud than most commentary acknowledged, as the broader “AI is additive to cloud spend” thesis was reinforced. Nvidia ($214, +0.8%) had a solid if unremarkable day. It is worth noting that Marvell’s own earnings beat, released after Wednesday’s close, is a genuine competitor narrative to Nvidia’s GPU dominance in AI inference, though the market seems happy to own both for now. Tesla ($442, +0.4%) tagged along with the broader risk-on mood in US markets overnight without any news of its own.

A Marvellous session

Beyond Nvidia, the broader semiconductor sector had a good day driven by the Marvell earnings catalyst. Marvell (MRVL) reported Q1 FY2027 earnings after Wednesday’s close with EPS of $0.80, a beat, revenue in line with its $2.4 billion guidance, and a Q2 revenue outlook of $2.7 billion that exceeded analyst expectations of $2.6 billion. The company also upgraded its full-year forecast to approximately $11.5 billion. The stock reacted positively Thursday, adding to gains that have already taken it up more than 140% year-to-date in 2026. Marvell’s story is the custom AI silicon thesis in its purest form: the world’s biggest hyperscalers (Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta) want their own AI accelerators rather than being wholly dependent on Nvidia’s GPUs, and Marvell is the primary designer of those custom chips.

Broadcom (AVGO, +1.2%) got a lift from the same thematic tailwind. The SOX index broadly tracked with the AI infrastructure optimism, though there was no single major catalyst for AMD, TSMC ADR, ASML, Qualcomm, Micron, or Intel individually: those names moved modestly with the sector. As a broader signal worth watching: the Snowflake-Amazon compute deal is a reminder that AI infrastructure spending is not just GPU procurement. The full stack, custom silicon, optical interconnects, cloud compute, and the software layer on top, is all accelerating, which is a tailwind for the entire semiconductor ecosystem beyond the Jensen Huang highlight reel.

One thing worth watching

The April PCE price index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, lands Friday, May 29 Sydney time. After Kashkari’s hawkish tone on Thursday and a 10-year yield that has now snapped back above 4.5%, a hot PCE print would land badly. Markets are currently pricing roughly 50% odds of a Fed rate hike by December, that is not a consensus that sits comfortably with a Nasdaq at all-time highs. The prior reading was 2.4% year-on-year, still above the Fed’s 2% target. If the print comes in above 2.5%, expect the AI-driven optimism to take a brief, but sharp reality check.

For a deeper look at how the Magnificent 7 have traded against each other over the past month, see the Stocks Down Under archive. And for more detail on Marvell’s Q1 result, the earnings release is available directly from the company. Full US markets overnight coverage resumes tomorrow morning.