[MARKET ANALYSIS] European equities trades softer while Tech and Software names gain following upbeat Nvidia and Salesforce earnings

• European bourses begin Thursday's trade with a negative tilt, with the majority of indices in the red, outside of the DAX 40. The primary reason for the upside in the German benchmark is the read-across following upbeat Nvidia and Salesforce earnings (see more below). The broad positiveness in chipmakers was also seen overnight, with the KOSPI closing with gains of 1.5%.
• Sectors highlight the negative bias, with Tech the only sector printing decent gains. To the downside lies Food, Beverages & Tobacco, with Chemicals and Optimised Personal Care rounding out the sector laggards.
• Key movers include: Pernod Ricard (-6.0%), Q2 revenue missed estimates and guided FY sales growth at the lower end of its range due to soft US market; Delivery Hero (+0.4%), raises its FY26 guidance; Kuehne+Nagel (-2.9%), US probes Apex Logistics over Nvidia AI chip smuggling; Novo Nordisk (-2.6%), downgraded to sell at Deutsche Bank; Computacenter (+4.7%), upgraded to buy at Peel Hunt.
• US equity futures are entirely in the green, with clear outperformance in the NQ following Nvidia (+7.5% pre-market) earnings after-hours. The tech behemouth reported Q2 metrics that beat estimates and forecasted stronger-than-expected FY28 growth, overshadowing the forecasted drop in Q3 margins. Elsewhere, Salesforce (+11.2% pre-market) also reported upbeat earnings that beat market consensus and guided metrics above forecasts.

Single-stock results of this scale acting as a regional index driver is a familiar pattern when one issuer dominates its supply chain: a beat from the AI hardware leader has repeatedly lifted chipmakers globally first, with the read-across strongest in semiconductor-heavy benchmarks, which fits the DAX and KOSPI outperformance against a broadly softer European tape. The distinction worth drawing is between the index-level mask and the sector-level truth; breadth here is negative, with Tech the only sector in the green, a configuration that has historically left the rally vulnerable if the catalyst stock fades in the cash session. The margin guidance drop flagged for the coming quarter against strong revenue and longer-dated growth forecasts is the classic tension in these prints, and the usual tell is whether pre-market strength in the Nasdaq futures survives the US open. Elsewhere the tape is idiosyncratic rather than macro: the spirits sector weakness on a soft US read, the downgrade-driven pharma move, and the chip-smuggling probe headline touching a logistics name each follow their own channels. The follow-ons are the US cash session reaction in the catalyst names and whether European semis hold gains into the close.