Stocks slipped on Wall Street Friday under increasing pressure from rising oil prices.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3 per cent, adding to its decline from a day before. The index is on track for a second-straight week of losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 541 points, or one per cent, as of 12:33 p.m. Eastern time.
The Nasdaq composite rose 0.1 per cent, bolstered by gains for several big tech stocks that also helped ease losses elsewhere.
Rising oil prices weighed heavily on the market, where three out of every four stocks within the benchmark S&P 500 index fell. The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil rose 3.6 per cent to US$117.20. It has surged from less than US$97 at the start of October and is now at its highest level since March.
Several AI-related companies made big moves. Micron Technology jumped 3.6 per cent and Microsoft rose 0.8 per cent and helped ease the impact on major indexes from a drop for most stocks. Advanced Micro Devices jumped 2.3 per cent.
The tech sector’s influence is also capable of quickly switching over to a heavy weight. Stocks that have benefited from the frenzy over AI have been swinging over rising worries about their path ahead. Investors are worried about whether their high prices are justified. Many of those companies have been borrowing to fund investments in AI technology and high interest rates are making those loans more expensive.
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“Investors appear increasingly focused on the economics of AI, particularly the substantial upfront costs required to build AI infrastructure and the uncertainty around the timing of returns on those investments,” said Angelo Kourkafas, senior global strategist at Edward Jones, in a research note.
The latest round of corporate earnings are being closely watched to help get a better sense of whether those investments are paying off, or might pay off. Several influential AI-related companies report their latest financial results next week, including Google’s parent, Alphabet, along with Microsoft and Amazon.
Industrial companies had some of the biggest losses. Caterpillar slumped 2.2 per cent.
American Express slumped 3.6 per cent and joined a drop for other financial companies, despite reporting profits for its most recent quarter that beat analysts’ forecasts. The company did announce its first major job cuts in roughly a decade.
Rising oil prices that weighed down much of the market helped boost energy companies. Chevron rose 2.9 per cent and ConocoPhillips rose 4.6 per cent.
European markets were lower. France’s main index fell 0.4 per cent, though yields on French government bonds eased a bit.
Treasury yields in the U.S. edged higher following sharp drops on Thursday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged up to 4.99 per cent from 4.96 per cent late Thursday.
Yields have been rising globally, partly over worries about governments taking on too much debt. Inflation also remains a concern and is stubbornly well above three per cent in the U.S. That prompted the Federal Reserve to raise its benchmark interest rate at its last meeting in an effort to cool inflation.
Wall Street expects the central bank to hold rates steady at its meeting next week, but is leaning heavily toward another rate hike in December.
Wall Street will also get several big economic updates next week, including the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation. The personal consumption expenditures index, or PCE, is expected to show that inflation rose at a 3.6 per cent rate in September, sharply above the Fed’s two per cent target.
The U.S. war with Iran has severely cut the world’s oil supply, driving energy prices higher and fueling a sharp jump in the cost of everything from gasoline to food and clothes.
ABOLISH WALL STREET AND THE WORLD STOCK MARKET ALL TOGETHER! BURN IT ALL DOWN!
Can you say I’ll be back.
In my opinion, we need to build data centres in Canada-but it must be done using a closed loop system. We can require the companies to provide the centres with energy and address resident concerns. Canada needs the employment plus this helps us become more digitally soverign.
Nobody wants AI. We’re in an energy crisis and all they keep doing is wasting more energy to do something a human brain can do way more efficiently. It’s baffling.