Stocks fell on Wall Street under increasing pressure from rising oil prices. The S&P 500 lost 0.5% Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gave back 1.2%. The Nasdaq composite slipped 0.2% after giving up a modest gain. The price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose 3.1% above $116 a barrel, its highest level since June 2022. European markets closed mostly lower. France’s main index fell 0.4%, though yields on French government bonds
eased a bit. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.99%.
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Stocks slipped on Wall Street Friday under increasing pressure from rising oil prices.
The S&P 500 fell 0.4%, 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 598 points, or 1.1%, as of 3:15 p.m. Eastern time.
The Nasdaq composite was down 0.1% after giving up a modest gain.
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 3.1% to settle at $116.72. It has surged from less than $97 at the start of October and is now at its highest level since June 2022.
Several AI-related companies rallied. Micron Technology climbed 2.5%, Intel rose 1.4% and Microsoft added 0.5%, helping ease the impact on major indexes from a drop for most stocks. Advanced Micro Devices jumped 1.9%.
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.
“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 fell 2.2%.
American Express slumped 3.9%, joining a pullback in other financial companies, despite r eporting profits for its most recent quarter that beat analysts' forecasts. The company did announce its first major job cuts in roughly a decade.
JPMorgan Chase fell 1.4%, Citigroup dropped 1.2% and Capital One Financial slid 1.6%.
Rising oil prices that weighed down much of the market helped boost energy companies. Chevron rose 2.8% and ConocoPhillips rose 3.8%.
European markets were lower. France’s main index fell 0.4%, 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% from 4.96% 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 3% 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 3.7% rate in September, sharply above the Fed's 2% 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.
