Stock Market Today: Dow Rises as Investors Dump Tech

The stock market today showed a sharp split as investors fled technology stocks and piled into safer assets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped roughly 550 points, or 1.1%, climbing above 52,000 on strength in consumer and defensive names including Nike, Home Depot, and Sherwin-Williams. The Nasdaq fell for its fourth straight day, while the S&P 500’s tech sector dropped about 0.6%.

Treasurys rallied as money moved out of equities: the benchmark 10-year yield fell to about 5.09%, and gold prices climbed. The 10-year had been above 5.3% on Wednesday after a hotter-than-expected inflation report.

AI Results Fail to Lift the Gloom

Even strong results from AI leaders could not calm the selloff. Anthropic reported a sharp jump in third-quarter revenue, and chip giant TSMC posted another record profit, saying there was “no ceiling” on its profitability. But heavily indebted AI plays kept falling: cloud-computing firm CoreWeave dropped again after tumbling 15% on Wednesday, though its shares recovered somewhat after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang publicly backed the company.

The rout spread across Asia overnight. South Korea’s chip-heavy Kospi index dropped 7%, while Japan’s Nikkei fell almost 5%.

Inflation Keeps the Fed in Play

The moves followed hot inflation data. Wholesale prices rose 6.3% year over year in September, the biggest jump since 2022. But a strong retail sales report — up 0.8%, double expectations — and jobless claims of 199,000 showed the consumer still holding up. Traders now see roughly a one-in-four chance of a Fed rate hike at its meeting in two weeks, with an 89% likelihood of at least a quarter-point increase by December.

Source: Wall Street Journal