Japan’s Economy Shows Signs of Life as Spending Revives

TOKYO—The Japanese economy returned to growth in the April-June quarter thanks to a recovery in spending by households and companies.

Japan’s gross domestic product expanded 0.8% in the three months to June from the previous quarter, preliminary government data showed Thursday. That compared with economists’ forecast for 0.6% growth in a poll by data provider Quick. The economy contracted 0.6% in the January-March quarter.

The figures come after the Bank of Japan opted to raise interest rates last month and signaled potential for further increases, stoking concern among some that the economy wasn’t yet strong enough to stomach the move, as a premature increase could dial back inflation too far and lead to a slowdown.

The economy grew 3.1% on an annualized basis, which reflects what would happen if the second-quarter pace continued for a full year.

Private consumption rose 1% from the previous quarter, snapping four consecutive quarters of declines. Car sales recovered, shrugging off the impact of production suspensions that had crimped output earlier in the year.

The rising cost of living and a struggling economy have led to a decline in Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s voter support. Kishida had introduced measures to protect households from inflation and revive consumption, including tax cuts and energy subsidies. But they didn’t help his approval ratings recover much, and Kishida said Wednesday that he won’t seek to stay in office.

Economists expect consumption to recover further in the July-September period thanks to the effects of the income and residential tax cuts. Real wages adjusted for inflation also turned positive in June for the first time in more than two years.

Thursday’s data showed capital expenditures also rose 0.9% on the back of solid corporate earnings.

One print showing some improvement may not be enough to convince analysts that the economy is getting back on track, however.

It will be difficult to say that the economy has emerged from its seesawing phase, NLI Research Institute economist Taro Saito said before Thursday’s data release. In order to confirm the recovery of the Japanese economy, it will be necessary to examine developments in the July-September quarter and thereafter, he said.

Economists at Moody’s Analytics meanwhile said in a recent note that even a robust increase in Thursday’s data would follow a series of lackluster gross domestic product reports that have captured falling output for the better part of a year.

Chip makers are fighting to assure investors that the artificial-intelligence boom is racing forward. Wall Street might not believe it until Nvidia’s NVDA -0.98%decrease; down pointing triangle Jensen Huang says so.

When Huang steps up to the mic for his company’s earnings call Wednesday, he will have the world’s attention. What he says about Nvidia’s present will preview the future of AI, dictate the path forward for a tech-crazed stock market and influence an American economy increasingly tethered to hopes that the boom won’t go bust.

The $5 trillion chip maker has provided the key building blocks for AI since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 set off a race for dominance among OpenAI, Anthropic and established Silicon Valley giants. Now, as Nvidia backstops sprawling data-center projects and an exotic money pipeline to boost chip demand, the company’s influence is arguably bigger than ever.

But there are signs of trouble ahead. Political pushback to AI is growing. A bond selloff propelled borrowing costs to their highest levels in years. The hyperscalers that include some of Nvidia’s key customers—once cash-printing machines—are relying more on debt. OpenAI recently told investors its revenue rose by a tepid 18% in the second quarter while its losses deepened.

Nvidia is increasingly stepping in to shore up potential weak points across the market. Earlier this month, the company teamed up with six of Wall Street’s biggest firms on a $500 billion AI-financing plan, pledging to backstop lending to customers that can’t afford its chips otherwise. The chip maker last week also took a stake in Cloverleaf Infrastructure, which arranges power for data centers, and struck a $6 billion deal with startup Poolside aimed at developing a powerful open-weight AI model.

After watching shares in other chip makers and the so-called Magnificent Seven tech companies swing wildly in recent months, Wall Street is hoping Nvidia can beat expectations—again. The countdown is on.

“It’s kind of becoming more and more like the World Cup final than the Super Bowl at this point,” said Brian Mulberry, chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management. “It’s just gotten to be that big.”

The company has smashed analysts’ earnings estimates for each of the 14 quarters since the AI boom kicked into high gear. Nvidia posted 210% annual growth in net income in its last three-month period, according to FactSet, making Wall Street’s 126% projection look pedestrian.

Expectations for a blowout second quarter have risen rapidly over the course of this year. All Nvidia will have to do to beat this target: outrun 95% annual earnings growth to more than $51.5 billion. Analysts project the chip maker will report record sales of $92 billion for the period, up from a forecast of $78 billion at the start of this year.

In July, big-tech earnings sparked volatility. Concerns about runaway capital spending spread across the sector after Alphabet’s and Tesla’s results, driving a $890 billion wipeout that contributed to the unwind of hedge fund Situational Awareness. Microsoft posted the largest one-day gain in market capitalization by any company, ever, after a quarter proving that it could still show investors the money. SpaceX rocketed higher after a record-breaking initial public offering, only to see $1 trillion in value evaporate.

Surging memory prices and borrowing costs have fueled fears that those and other companies will be unable to keep plowing more money into supplies including Nvidia chips. Shaia Hosseinzadeh, founder of OnyxPoint Global Management, has recently bought dips in AI-infrastructure stocks when Wall Street has strained to absorb massive debt issued by Silicon Valley.

“The macro data is really quite robust,” he said. “Of course, there’s a level at which everything breaks.”

Investors have kept pumping money into the AI trade despite concerns around chip consumers—and to the benefit of chip producers. That is why Nvidia’s outlook for semiconductor demand could send ripples through counterparts such as Micron Technology and Sandisk, developers of the data centers in which their chips reside, and a supply chain of power producers, contractors and other specialists that underpin the globe-spanning AI build-out.

“We joke internally that we’re all Nvidia analysts now,” said David Lefkowitz, head of U.S. equities at UBS Global Wealth Management.

The irony is that investors have tended to sell Nvidia stock immediately after blockbuster earnings, with shares falling each trading session after its four past quarterly reports. Some are betting that will be the case this time around, too.

The options market is pricing in a 5.3% swing, higher or lower, in Nvidia shares during the session following earnings, according to Option Research & Technology Services. That is higher than the 4.8% average move in Nvidia’s stock over the last 12 months after the company reports quarterly results.

In recent days, some of the most actively traded Nvidia options have been put contracts tied to the stock falling from its Friday value of $214.75 to $205 and $210 apiece, according to Cboe Global Markets data. Put options give the right to sell a stock by a set price and typically represent a bearish wager.

Many analysts remain optimistic. Frank Lee, global head of tech hardware and semiconductor research at HSBC Global Investment Research, recently raised his price target for Nvidia shares to $360 from $325, citing, among other things, Nvidia’s strategic partnerships with suppliers and its role as a top contributor to open-source AI.

Japan’s Economy Shows Signs of Life as Spending Revives

Gross domestic product expanded 0.8% in the three months to June from the previous quarter, preliminary government data showed

Nvidia’s earnings will test Wall Street’s confidence in the AI boom.