Stock market today: AI stocks leap as interest-rate worries hold back the rest of Wall Street
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes are mixed Thursday as technology stocks propelled by a blowout profit report from Nvidia work against weakness elsewhere in the market. In the latest example of how good news for the economy isn’t necessarily good for Wall Street, strong economic reports raised worries about interest rates staying high.
The S&P 500 was up 0.1% in late morning trading. The rallies for tech stocks had the Nasdaq composite up 0.6%, as of 10:30 a.m. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which has less of an emphasis on tech, was lagging the market and down 280 points, or 0.7%.
Nvidia soared 9.5% after delivering its latest knockout profit report late on Wednesday. Its revenue surged 262% in the latest quarter from a year earlier, and its profit leaped an eye-popping 629%. The company’s chips are helping to train artificial-intelligence systems, and demand for them has been voracious.
Nvidia also increased its dividend as its CEO, Jensen Huang, touted how “the next industrial revolution has begun.”
Concern has grown that Wall Street’s frenzy around the potential for AI has created a bubble where prices have soared too high and expectations have grown too tough. But the continued skyrocketing growth for Nvidia, which has become one of Wall Street’s most influential stocks, helped lift others only further.
Super Micro Computer, which sells server and storage systems used in AI and other computing, rose 4.4%.
News Corp. gained 1.4% after it announced a deal to bring its content from The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and other news businesses to OpenAI.
But the majority of stocks were falling on Wall Street as pressure weighed on them from rising yields in the bond market. Reports suggesting the U.S. economy remains strong forced traders to rethink bets about when the Federal Reserve could offer financial markets relief by lowering interest rates.
The Fed is trying to pull off the difficult feat of slowing the economy enough through high rates to get inflation fully under control but not so much that it forces a painful recession. It’s been holding its main interest rate at the highest level in more than two decades to do so, and Wall Street is itching for some easing.
A hotter-than-expected economy could push the Federal Reserve to wait longer before cutting interest rates, after traders already sharply ratcheted back their earlier, too-optimistic forecasts. What’s worse, it could force the Federal Reserve to ultimately raise rates more and cause a deep recession to get inflation to fully succumb.
Hopes are still high for at least one cut to rates this year. But traders pulled some back some of those bets after a preliminary report on Thursday suggested growth in U.S. business activity is running at its fastest level in more than two years. The report from S&P Global said growth improved for businesses not only in the services sector but also in beaten-down manufacturing.
A separate report, meanwhile, showed the U.S. job market remains solid despite high interest rates. Fewer workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected, an indication that layoffs remain relatively low.
Treasury yields had been close to flat following the joblessness report, but they turned higher immediately after the report on business activity.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.49% from 4.43% late Wednesday. The two-year yield, which more closely tracks expectations for action by the Federal Reserve, climbed to 4.94% from 4.87%.
High interest rates have made everything from credit-card payments to auto loans more expensive. Tougher mortgage rates have also hurt, and a report on Thursday showed sales of new homes weakened by more last month than economists expected.
Homebuilders Lennar fell 1.4%, and PulteGroup slipped 1.4%.
One of Wall Street’s sharpest drops came from VF Corp., the company behind The North Face, Vans, Timberland and other brands. It fell 6.5% after reporting a loss for the latest quarter, along with weaker revenue than analysts expected.
Utility and real-estate stocks were also falling sharply. When interest rates are high, bonds are paying more in interest. That can peel away some investors who would normally gravitate to utilities and real-estate investment trusts because of their high dividends.
American Water Works fell 3%, and Alexandria Real Estate Equities sank 2.7%.
Live Nation Entertainment sank 4.9% after the Justice Department accused it and its Ticketmaster business of running an illegal monopoly over live events in the country.
In stock markets abroad indexes were mixed across Europe and Asia. Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 1.3% in part on strength for semiconductor-related companies following Nvidia’s powerful profit report. Indexes fell 1.7% Hong Kong and 1.3% in Shanghai amid questions about whether a fresh flurry of policies to help China’s troubled property sector will suffice to end the industry’s crisis.
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AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.