NEW YORK (AP) 鈥� Stocks wavered in afternoon trading on Wall Street Wednesday and hovered around their records set a day earlier, while oil prices held steady.
The S&P 500 was mostly unchanged. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 444 points, or 0.8%, as of 1:08 p.m. Eastern time. The Nasdaq composite fell 0.4%.
The S&P 500 and the Dow both set records on Tuesday, while the Nasdaq is just over 2% below its record. Every major index had been surging this week, giving August a strong start.
鈥淭he coiled spring investors have been waiting for has finally released, with the S&P 500 Index surging to record highs for the first time in two months,” said Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide, in a report.
The market has been generally rising as companies head into the closing stretch of their latest round of earnings reports with sharp overall gains. Three-quarters of the companies within the S&P 500 have reported results so far, and Wall Street expects profit growth of 50% when they are all finished.
Co. rose 2% after easily beating Wall Street鈥檚 profit forecasts, helped by a $1 billion box office haul from 鈥淭oy Story 5鈥� and theme park revenue.
Booking Holdings jumped 6.2% after reporting that strong travel demand drove profit and revenue growth during its most recent quarter.
Elon Musk’s fell 8.7% following the release late Tuesday of its first quarterly report as a public company, which showed that it sharply boosted spending on artificial intelligence. The company did help give semiconductor giant Nvidia a 4.3% boost after announcing it would exclusively use that company鈥檚 chips for its artificial intelligence technology.
That announcement weighed on Advanced Micro Devices, which fell 6%. Musk had previously said that SpaceX and his electric vehicle company, Tesla, would use chips from both Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia.
Treasury yields held relatively steady in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury remained at 4.63% from late Tuesday.
Markets in Asia rose. Benchmarks jumped more than 3% in Tokyo and Seoul as computer chipmakers and other companies climbed. European markets were mixed.
Strong corporate profits and expectations for more growth ahead have been steering stocks higher. Wall Street has also been worried about stock prices becoming unjustifiably high, especially within the technology sector and for companies focused on artificial intelligence. Profit growth, especially for some of the big chipmakers, like Nvidia, could help justify some of the big investments those companies are making in AI.
鈥淭he market appears to be moving from rewarding companies for AI spending to assessing the revenue and earnings that these investments can generate,鈥� said Brian Therien, analyst, investment strategy, at Edward Jones, in a report.
AI-focused companies, with their big market values, have been behind many of the big market swings and most of Wall Street’s gains. Nvidia’s gain helped support the broader market on Wednesday, despite more stocks losing ground than gaining within the S&P 500. Micron Technology also helped support the market with a 3.3% gain.
Uncertainty about the direction of the U.S. war with Iran continues hanging over the market. said a deal to reopen the could come as early as Wednesday. But there have been many stops and starts during the five-month old conflict that has stifled the global supply of oil and rattled energy markets.
The price of Brent crude, the international standard, fell 0.3% to $79.15 a barrel. Oil prices have been swinging for months and were as high as $102 per barrel at one point during the conflict, jolting already stubbornly high inflation. Higher oil prices pushed gasoline prices higher and increased shipping costs for a wide range of products.
Inflation concerns have been hanging over markets and the Federal Reserve. The central bank has been holding its key benchmark rate steady as it monitors the costs and the impact on the economy. Wall Street expects the central bank to raise rates at least once before the end of 2026. Household spending remains resilient, despite the stress from higher costs on everything from gas to groceries.
The jobs market has been one of the stronger areas of the economy, though growth has been slowing. Wall Street will get another update on Friday with the monthly employment report for July.
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Associated Press writers Elaine Kurtenbach and Mayuko Ono contributed to this report.
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