The ASX 200's 1.24 per cent gain was its best since mid-July, as Nvidia's results convinced enough investors the AI trade is still on.
In early trade, the S&P 500 futures are still up 1.3%, pointing to a rip-roaring open on Wall Street tonight.
Who knows where it will finish, though?
As it turns out, I'll be with you again from about 7:30am AEDT tomorrow to let you know.
Until then...
Smoke continues to pour from DroneShield's engine housing.
Despite the market running hot today, the high-tech defence minnow continues to lose altitude, shedding another 4.1% and adding to the 67% fall from its peak just a month ago.
The company's stock price of $1.89 is still up 147% so far this year, despite the recent meltdown.
Today's hit comes as wary investors grapple with the company's lengthy explanation to the ASX over who knew what when the company's leaders simultaneously donned parachutes a fortnight ago and jettisoned their shares.
Between them, chief executive Oleg Vornick, chairman Peter James and director Jethro Marks sold $70 million worth of stock — performance rights that had just vested — over the course of five trading days, sparking an investor revolt that shows no sign of containment.
The 16-page response to the ASX says the company was not a party to the sale and the directors didn't inform it.
The market was also informed there was "no agreement" between the directors to all sell all of their stock at exactly the same time.
The ASX was also curious about whether any of the directors sold shares immediately after the company issued an incorrect statement about new sales in the US on Monday, November 10.
The answer was yes. Oleg Vornick sold just under $1.8 million worth of stock that morning before the mistake was corrected. James sold around $443,000 and Marks offloaded a little over $146,000 worth.
However, given the volume of shares they were selling over those five trading days, there doesn't appear to be anything out of the ordinary about the number of shares the directors sold that morning.
In fact, all three directors had already sold off the majority of their shares by Friday, November 7.
According to the company, the blame lay with the US buyer, who incorrectly filled out a form which then wasn't manually checked by DroneShield's American team.
It may be just a coincidence, but the company's American boss Matt McCrann quit DroneShield this week, effective immediately. His unexplained exit sent the stock 20% lower on the day it was announced.
Prices current around 4:30pm AEDT
The S&P/ASX 200 has closed up 104 points or 1.2% to 8,552 points.
The top performing stocks in the index were Block CDI and Liontown Resources, up 10.77% and 9.73% respectively.
The index has lost 2.3% for the past five days, but it has gained 4.8% in the year to date.
Wall Street, at last check, is setting itself up for another bullish trading session.
S&P 500 futures: up 1.3%.
NASDAQ futures: up 1.8%.
Dow futures up 0.6%.
Figures at 4:10pm AEDT.
An interesting short note from Thomas Matthews, the head of markets Asia-Pacific at Capital Economics:
"Recent earnings reports give cause for optimism about the health of the AI equity market rally, in our view, and we think it has further to run."
So why does he think that?
"There have been two big questions seemingly weighing on investors' minds lately," he explains.
"First, will the ultimate demand for AI be strong enough to justify the enormous amount of capital expenditure currently underway?
"Frankly, it's too soon to tell. But Nvidia's commentary around its report (and that of the so-called "hyperscalers" undertaking the capex, with respect to their own reports) suggests that those closest to the buildout remain confident."
The second question is whether valuations in the sector are still too high, even if the demand is there.
"One reason, in principle, for higher PE ratios might be that investors had become more optimistic about earnings more than a year ahead. If so, then the seemingly strong momentum in tech earnings at the moment, of which Nvidia is the most recent example, might help to calm their nerves, even if there is still plenty of water to flow under the bridge yet," Matthews opines.
However, he does see one potentially imminent threat to a sustainable recovery in tech stocks.
"But there's a separate reason for sky-high valuations this year: lower real "safe" asset yields. Indeed, by our estimate, valuations have become less stretched year-to-date when accounting for this. And it's probably not wholly a coincidence that the recent troubles in tech started around the same time investors began paring back expectations for cuts, and yields began to rebound," he argues.
"We think investors are still expecting too many cuts next year, too. If so, it could prove an ongoing threat to the AI rally, even if we doubt it would be nearly enough to derail it completely."
Staying on the Japanese bond market, analysts have told the ABC investors are preparing for Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to announce a huge "supplementary budget" of over 20 trillion Yen.
In simple terms, there is concern in the bond market the new prime minister will overspend, putting enormous pressure on the bond market.
The government will tap the bond market to finance its fiscal agenda.
During the recent election campaign, Takaichi promised voters she would boost the economy and protect households from rising prices.
"There is a fear in the market that the stance of the government is now pretty dovish," chief desk strategist at Mizuho, Shoki Omor, said.
"It may be an overreaction today, but the market clearly thinks that the government is going to have to issue longer-dated bonds to fund its spending plans."
It's been an impressive run on the ASX 200 today... but it's slowing as we approach the close.
The S&P/ASX 200 index is up 1.2% at 8,548 (3:50PM AEDT).
The index has gained 4.77% over the last year to date.
While most stock markets across the Asia Pacific region are doing well, there is one exception.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index is only up 0.1% to 25,867 at 3:30pm AEDT.
The Hong Kong-listed Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), the world’s largest battery maker, has fallen more than 8%.
It follows the expiry of a six-month sales restriction on about 77.5 million shares held by early stakeholders.
Macquarie Technology Group CEO David Tudehope claims to have a front row seat in Australian AI development.
He says NVIDIA’s positive results overnight underscore the strong fundamentals of AI, and that "Australia is slowly waking up" to the global AI opportunity.
Mr Tudehope penned this note earlier.
"When it lands fully it will bring enormous opportunities to Australia and generate wealth right across the economy.
"In our business, we not only build data centres to store and protect data, we also provide cybersecurity, cloud computing and AI services for the customers whose data we protect. This means we get to see firsthand what enterprise and public sector organisations are doing with their data, how they are increasingly adopting AI, cloud, and cyber solutions. While Australia has had a relatively slow start, this is changing."