US stocks hold near records on hopes of an agreement with Iran
Coeur d'Alene Press | UPDATED 6 days, 6 hours AGO
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks meandered to a mixed finish on Wall Street Wednesday and remained close to their records, while oil prices held steady.
The uncertain trading on Wall Street followed two days of big gains that gave the week and August a strong start. Several big technology companies slumped, though, ultimately weighing down the market.
The S&P 500 fell 12.97 points, or 0.2%, to close at 7,723.55. The index spent most of the day higher after surging to a record on Tuesday.
“The 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 Dow Jones industrial Average rose 263.24 points, or 0.5%, to 54,349.12, reaching another record.
The Nasdaq fell 221.55 points, or 0.8%, to 26,363.44. The index was weighed down by big technology companies losing ground, including a 4% drop for Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and a 1.1% drop for Microsoft.
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.
The Walt Disney Co. rose 3.6% after easily beating Wall Street’s profit forecasts, helped by a $1 billion box office haul from “Toy Story 5” and theme park revenue.
Booking Holdings jumped 6.6% after reporting that strong travel demand drove profit and revenue growth during its most recent quarter.
Elon Musk's SpaceX fell 13.6% 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 3.4% boost after announcing it would exclusively use that company’s chips for its artificial intelligence technology.