Wall Street is edging lower on Tuesday following drops for Palantir and other stars that had been riding the mania surrounding artificial intelligence technology.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.4% and is on track for a third straight modest loss after setting its all-time high last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 8 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 11:50 a.m. ET, and the Nasdaq composite was down 1%.
The heaviest weight on the market was Nvidia, whose chips are powering much of the move into AI. It sank 2%.
Another AI darling, Palantir Technologies, dropped 5.7%, for the largest loss in the S&P 500. It has seen bets build up sharply among investors this year that its stock price will drop, according to S3 Partners. Only Meta Platforms has seen a bigger increase in what’s called “short interest,” where traders essentially bet a stock’s price will fall. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, fell 1.7%.
Criticism has been rising that stock prices have shot too high, too fast, and have become too expensive.
One way companies can make their stock prices look less expensive is to deliver solid growth in profits. Palo Alto Networks climbed 4.7% after reporting earnings and revenue for the latest quarter that topped analysts’ expectations. The cybersecurity company also gave forecasts for profit and revenue in its upcoming fiscal year that were above Wall Street’s.
Home Depot’s rise of 3.1%, meanwhile, was the biggest reason the Dow was doing better than other indexes. The Dow had been flirting earlier in the morning with its own record, which was set in December.
The retailer reported results for the latest quarter that were a bit short of what analysts expected. But it nevertheless delivered growth in revenue and stood by its prior forecasts for revenue and profit over the full year.
Other big retailers will deliver their latest profit updates in the coming days. Lowe’s and Target are on deck for Wednesday, while Walmart and Ross Stores will report on Thursday.
The week’s likely headliner for Wall Street is arriving on Friday. That’s when the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, will give a highly anticipated speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The setting has been home to big policy announcements from the Fed in the past, and the hope on Wall Street is that Powell may give a hint that cuts to interest rates are coming soon.
The Fed has been keeping its main interest rate steady this year, primarily because of the fear of the possibility that President Donald Trump’s tariffs could push inflation higher. But a surprisingly weak report on job growth across the country may be superseding that.
Traders on Wall Street widely expect the Fed to cut interest rates at its next meeting in September in order to give the economy a boost. Treasury yields have come down notably in the bond market as a result, and they fell on Tuesday.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.31%, from 4.34%, late Monday.
Strategists at Bank of America, though, warn that Powell may not sound as inclined to cut interest rates as the market is expecting. He could remain noncommittal and discuss the possibility of a worst-case scenario for the economy called “stagflation.” The Fed has no good tool to fix that situation, in which the economy stagnates at the same time that inflation remains high.
On Wall Street, Tegna rose 4.1% after Nexstar Media Group said it will buy the owner of 64 television stations across the country for $22 per share in cash, giving the deal a total value of $6.2 billion, including debt. Nexstar, which owns the CW and local television broadcasters of its own, added 0.4%.
The companies said combining will give them a broader reach and allow them to better compete with Big Tech and legacy media.
Viking Therapeutics tumbled 43% after the biopharmaceutical company released results from a clinical trial of its oral tablet, which could treat obesity and other metabolic disorders.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in Europe after falling modestly in Asia.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index slipped 0.4% as market heavyweight SoftBank Group Corp. fell 4% after it announced it was taking a $2 billion stake in U.S. chipmaker Intel.
Intel climbed 7.7%. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also confirmed in an interview on CNBC that the Trump administration may take an ownership stake in Intel.
—By Stan Choe, AP business writer
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
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