Stocks fell in shaky trading on Wall Street Friday, but the market still posted its first winning week since early October. The S&P 500 fell 0.4% Friday and closed with a weekly gain of 2.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 50 points, or 0.1%. The Nasdaq composite fell 0.9%. Technology stocks were the biggest weights on the market. Nvidia shares fell again, a day after the AI industry was rocked by the resignation of CEO Jensen Huang. Oil prices
were little changed. Treasury yields rose in the bond market. Stocks in Europe were mixed.
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Stocks fell in shaky trading on Wall Street Friday, but the market remains on track for a winning week.
Major indexes have been unsteady throughout the week as AI-focused companies pushed and pulled the market. Many of those companies have big stock values with a heavier impact on the market's gains or losses.
The S&P 500 shifted from modest moves at the opening of trading to a 0.5% drop. The index still remains on track for a weekly gain of 2.4%. That would mark its first weekly gain since early October and its biggest since August.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average reversed an early slide and was up 37 points, or 0.1%, as of 3:05 p.m. Eastern time. The Nasdaq composite fell 0.9%.
The market remains unsteady a day after the AI industry was rocked by the resignation of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. The company has been the face of the AI industry, which has been responsible for much of the gains, and big swings, on Wall Street.
Huang stepped down after his affair with a Chinese tech executive raised U.S. national security concerns. Nvidia’s longtime chief financial officer, Colette Kress, will be its interim CEO.
The AI industry's influence over Wall Street was evident again Friday. More stocks within the S&P 500 were rising rather than falling, but a slump for technology stocks with a big focus on AI dragged indexes lower.
Nvidia was again among the heaviest weights and it fell 2%. Broadcom fell 5.1% and Advanced Micro Devices lost 9%. Both companies saw their shares surge earlier this week as the management shakeup at Nvidia unfolded.
Nvidia in particular has been slipping for weeks amid wider concerns about a potential slowdown for the industry. The big worry has been whether AI will produce enough profit to justify the costly investments and big stock values.
“Nvidia's pullback serves as a reminder of the concentration risk embedded in a market where a small number of mega-cap technology stocks have driven an outsized share of returns,” said Angelo Kourkafas, senior global strategist at Edward Jones, in a research note.
Outside of AI, Microsoft rose 0.4%, despite suffering a global outage for its web services that disrupted email accounts and other applications.
Among the gainers were health care and financial stocks. Eli Lilly and Co. rose 1.5%, while payment processors Visa and Mastercard added 1.4% and 1.3%, respectively.
Oil prices swung a day after President Donald Trump said that the U.S. didn’t “need a deal with Iran” even as the conflict in the Middle East drags on. Brent crude, the international standard, initially jumped early Friday before easing. It settled at $95.84 a barrel. It was trading near $72 per barrel in late February before the Iran war began.
Stocks in Europe were mixed.
Treasury yields were mixed in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which influences mortgage rates, rose to 5.15% from 5.10% late Thursday.
The yield on the two-year Treasury rose to 4.87% from 4.86% late Thursday. It closely tracks expectations for action from the Federal Reserve, which is expected to raise its benchmark interest rate at its December meeting in an effort to cool stubbornly hot inflation.
A report on Friday showed that wholesale inflation cooled a bit last month, but remains very high. The report measures inflation experienced by businesses, before it can reach consumers. Inflation at the consumer level remains stubbornly high at well above 3%. That's also much higher than the Fed's preferred target of 2%.
Rising energy prices because of the U.S. war with Iran have been fueling inflation. Household budgets are getting squeezed directly by higher gasoline costs, but pricier gas and diesel raise costs for anything that is shipped. Prices for everything from food to clothing have been rising.
The latest wholesale inflation report also shows food prices and other costs gaining ground, despite some easing for energy costs.
“That suggests inflation is working its way into the broader economy rather than remaining concentrated in the original areas of price pressure,” said Chris Osmond, chief investment officer for Fifth Third Wealth Advisors, in a research note. “If that continues, it becomes much harder for the Fed to simply look through inflation as temporary.”
The central bank held rates steady at its last meeting, following a previous rate hike. The latest hot updates on inflation have prompted economists to overwhelmingly expect a rate hike at the upcoming December meeting, with another hike likely to follow in January.
Rate hikes by the Fed can cool inflation, but that makes borrowing more expensive and can slow economic growth.
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AP Business Writers Chan Ho-Him and Michelle Chapman contributed to this report.
