A renewed slide in AI hyperscalers pulled Wall Street's biggest benchmarks lower at midday Monday. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 are swinging into the red even as the Dow Jones and small caps pushed higher.
U.S.-Iran talks over the Strait of Hormuz sent oil prices sliding, amid lingering bets that a hawkish Federal Reserve could still raise interest rates this year.
West Texas Intermediate crude sank about 4.8% to roughly $73.64 a barrel, almost fully erasing its Iran-war premium.
Across U.S. equity markets by midday Monday, the action was sharply split. The S&P 500 slipped about 0.4% to 7,474, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average bucked the trend with a gain of roughly 0.3%, or about 171 points, to 51,736.
The Nasdaq 100 fell about 0.6% to 30,238 as the megacap complex cracked. Within Magnificent Seven stocks, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) tumbled more than 6% after Nobel laureate John Jumper announced he was leaving Google DeepMind for AI startup Anthropic.
Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) dropped about 4.5% and Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) each fell around 2.6%, as investors fretted over soaring AI capital spending.
Shares of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX) slid 10% following a new bond offering of $20 billion. The stock has now fallen 26% since its high last week.
Monday's Performance In Major US Indices
According to market data:
- The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSE:VOO) slipped 0.4%.
- The SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust (NYSE:DIA) rose 0.4%.
- The Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) fell 0.5%.
- The iShares Russell 2000 ETF (NYSE:IWM) gained 0.5%.
Communications Sink, Getty Images Climb On OpenAI Deal
The best-performing corner of the market was the Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE:XLV), up about 0.7%, followed by the Industrials Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE:XLI) at roughly 0.5% and the Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE:XLF) at about 0.4%, the latter firming as climbing yields lifted lenders.
The clear laggard was the Communication Services Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE:XLC), down about 2.7% under the weight of Alphabet's slide, with the Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE:XLY) off roughly 1.5%.
Semiconductors stayed firmly bid, with the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SMH) up 0.5%. Super Micro Computer Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) jumped about 15% and ON Semiconductor Corp. (NASDAQ:ON) rose about 7.8%, both riding the broad semiconductor rally.
AbbVie Inc. (NYSE:ABBV) climbed about 7% after agreeing to buy Apogee Therapeutics in a $10.9 billion cash deal.
Rocket Lab Corp. (NASDAQ:RKLB) dropped about 8.3% and AST SpaceMobile Inc. (NASDAQ:ASTS) fell about 8.0%, in sympathy with SpaceX.
The standout move belonged to Getty Images Holdings Inc. (NYSE:GETY), which more than doubled, soaring about 119% after announcing a partnership with OpenAI.
