Nvidia’s shares slid for their worst day since April on Thursday, dragging down major U.S. stock indexes even as “most” stocks on Wall Street rose. The pullback followed Nvidia’s latest quarterly results, which the company said showed another period of profit growth that cleared analysts’ expectations and a current-quarter revenue forecast that topped Wall Street’s estimates.
The market’s reaction reflected how quickly investors are recalibrating around artificial-intelligence spending. AP said worries were rising that customers could eventually curb spending on Nvidia’s chips and other AI investments amid doubts about whether they can recoup their large expenditures through future productivity gains.
The broader indexes finished with mixed moves: the S&P 500 slipped 0.5% after sharp swings earlier in the week tied to “hopes and worries” around the AI revolution, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 17 points (less than 0.1%), and the Nasdaq composite fell 1.2%. AP also said Nvidia’s decline mattered disproportionately because Nvidia is the largest stock in the U.S. market by value, giving it more influence on the S&P 500 than any other company.
Nvidia’s stock fell 5.5%, its worst loss since April, as the company’s blowout performance appeared to be losing momentum. AP reported that Nvidia’s drop alone accounted for more than four-fifths of the S&P 500’s loss; even with Nvidia weighing on the benchmark, AP said seven stocks in the S&P 500 rose for every three that fell.
Among the gainers, Salesforce climbed 4% after it reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. AP said the company also announced plans to return more cash to shareholders, including sending up to $50 billion through stock buybacks and increasing its dividend, and it quoted Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff saying, “Agentic AI is a tailwind for our business,”
Elsewhere, AP reported that companies across industries—such as trucking logistics and financial services—faced sharp and aggressive selling this year from investors concerned their businesses could be disrupted by AI or become obsolete. AP said the sharpest swings had hit software companies, and it cited a widely followed exchange-traded fund that tracks the industry, which rose 2.1% on Thursday as it trimmed its year-to-date decline to below 22%.
In international markets, AP said indexes rose modestly in Europe after a mixed finish in Asia. It reported South Korea’s Kospi jumped 3.7% to another record, driven by gains for tech-related stocks, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.4%. In the bond market, AP said Treasury yields eased, with the 10-year yield falling to 4.01% from 4.05% late Wednesday.
The session’s commodity moves came amid market attention on U.S. and Iran indirect talks about Iran’s nuclear program. AP said strategists at Macquarie described the current round of talks as “make or break,” and it said investors worry a peaceful solution could remove the threat of war—while a failure could block the global flow of oil and drive up prices.
AP reported that a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude briefly fell as low as $63.60, before recovering and ending at $65.21, up 0.3%. It said Brent crude, the international standard, also swung and finished at $70.75 per barrel, down 0.1%.
AP said the day also included macro signals from a report that showed the number of U.S. workers applying for unemployment benefits ticked up last week, though not by more than economists expected and remaining relatively low compared with history. All told, AP reported the S&P 500 fell 37.27 points to 6,908.86, the Dow Jones gained 17.05 to 49,499.20, and the Nasdaq composite sank 273.69 to 22,878.38. The market’s moves were reported by AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott.