NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are holding relatively steady in the early going on Wall Street as more U.S. companies turn in their latest quarterly reports. The S&P 500 was little changed in the first few minutes of trading Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 73 points, or 0.2%, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.1%. Taser maker Axon Enterprise lost about one-fifth of its value after forecasting weaker profits than analysts were expecting. McDonald’s
rose 2.5% after reporting that its sales benefited from the return of its popular Snack Wraps in the third quarter. European markets were mostly lower and Asian markets closed mostly lower.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
Technology stocks were dragging Wall Street modestly lower as markets take in another big batch of corporate earnings Wednesday while waiting for the Supreme Court to decide on the legality of President Donald Trump’s unilaterally imposed tariffs.
Futures for the S&P 500 slipped 0.1%, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were flat. Futures for the Nasdaq, where the most prominent tech companies trade, fell 0.2%.
In a pivotal test of executive power with trillion-dollar implications for the global economy, the Republican administration is trying to defend the tariffs central to Trump’s economic agenda after lower courts ruled the emergency law he invoked doesn’t give him the power to charge duties on imports.
The Constitution says Congress has the power to levy tariffs. But the Trump administration argues that in emergency situations the president can regulate importation taxes like tariffs. Trump said a ruling against him would be catastrophic for the economy.
The challengers argue the 1977 emergency powers law Trump used doesn’t even mention tariffs, and no president before has used it to impose them. A collection of small businesses say the uncertainty is driving them to the brink of bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, technology stocks were falling again Wednesday on fears that the sector has been overvalued amid the frenzy over artificial intelligence.
The software maker and AI darling Palantir fell 1.9% before markets opened Wednesday, even after it posted strong third quarter results. That decline follows a 7.9% drop a day earlier amid growing fears that the technology sector — especially AI-related stocks — may have peaked.
Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices fell 4.3% following a similar decline Tuesday. AMD also beat Wall Street's sales and profit projections.
The technology sector has been driving gains this year, but some analysts think that Tuesday's widespread losses may portend the beginning of the end of that run.
“The rally that began in April is finally feeling its age. What we are seeing (Tuesday) wasn’t just a dip; it was a full-scale reality check,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.
“This wasn’t the usual intraday shake-out. It felt more like the oxygen suddenly thinning at the top of a mountain that everyone assumed had no summit,” he said.
Outside the tech sector, McDonald's shares ticked up less than 1% after it reported a rise in same-store sales fueled by the reintroduction of Snack Wraps to its menu after a nine-year absence.
Benchmarks in Asia recovered much of the ground lost earlier in the day, when Tokyo’s Nikkei fell nearly 5%. It recovered to close 2.5% lower, at 50,212.27.
The spillover from Wall Street was evident in overseas trading. Shares in energy and tech giant SoftBank Group sank 10% on jitters over its investments in artificial intelligence. Computer chipmaker Tokyo Electron dropped 4.1%, while stock in Advantest Corp., a maker of semiconductor testing equipment, lost 6%.
Toyota Motor Corp. lost 3.7%. The company reported a 7% decline in its profit for the April-September period, but raised its earnings forecast for the year, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s higher tariffs on imports of autos and auto parts.
South Korea’s Kospi declined 2.9% to 4,004.42 as Samsung Electronics shed 4.1%. SK Hynix, which had logged major gains thanks to plans to develop artificial intelligence with chipmaker Nvidia, lost 1.2%.
Chinese markets wavered between gains and losses. The Shanghai Composite index recovered from modest earlier losses to edge 0.2% higher, to 3,969.25. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng declined 0.1% to 25,935.41.
In early European trading, Germany's DAX gave up 0.3%, the CAC 40 in Paris dipped 0.1% and Britain's FTSE 100 ticked 0.2% higher.
In energy trading, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 19 cents to $60.37 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, shed 16 cents to $64.27 per barrel.
The dollar rose to 153.72 Japanese yen from 153.66 yen. The euro rose to $1.1494 from $1.1482.
The price of gold, which tends to climb in times of uncertainty, inched up 0.5% to $3,978 an ounce.
Bitcoin ticked up 1% to about $102,639 each. The original cryptocurrency is down about 18% from the all-time high it hit a month ago.
