Most US stocks fall, but Nvidia keeps Wall Street near records

The Hill

5 days ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Most U.S. stocks are falling on Tuesday after an update on inflation hurt Wall Street's hopes for lower interest rates. But indexes are staying close to their records thanks to Nvidia, the market's most influential stock.
The S&P 500 was down 0.1% in midday trading and just a bit below its all-time high, which was set on Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 294 points, or 0.7%, as of 11 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% higher and on track to set another record.
Stocks were feeling pressure from a report showing inflation accelerated to 2.7% last month in the United States from 2.4% in May. Economists pointed to increases in prices for clothes, toys and other things that tend to get imported from other countries. Their prices could be rising because of tariffs that President Donald Trump has imposed on countries worldwide in hopes of getting them to open their markets further to U.S. products.
'Inflation has begun to show the first signs of tariff pass-through,' according to Ellen Zentner, chief economic strategist for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.
To be sure, the inflation rate for June reported on Tuesday morning wasn't far from what economists expected. And an underlying measure of inflation that economists think is a better predictor of future trends accelerated by less than feared.
Altogether, the data caused Treasury yields to yo-yo a few times in the bond market before they began rising.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.47% from 4.43% late Monday. The yield on the two-year Treasury, which more closely tracks expectations for what the Federal Reserve will do with short-term interest rates, rose to 3.94% from 3.90%.
A further acceleration in inflation could tie the hands of the Fed, which has kept interest rates on hold so far this year, because lower rates can give inflation more fuel. Wall Street loves lower interest rates because they goose prices higher for stocks and other investments, and Trump himself has been clamoring for the Fed to cut more quickly.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell, though, has been adamant that he wants to wait for more data about how tariffs affect the economy and inflation before moving. Following Tuesday's inflation data, traders are still overwhelmingly betting that the Fed will cut its main interest rate at least once by the end of the year. But they pulled back their bets on the number of potential cuts, compared with a day before, according to data from CME Group.
On Wall Street, tech stocks were the outliers and rose after Nvidia said the U.S. government assured it that licenses will be granted for its H20 chip again and that deliveries will hopefully begin soon. Nvidia's 4.3% gain was by far the strongest force pushing upward on the S&P 500.
Earlier this year, Nvidia said that U.S. restrictions on the chips used in artificial-intelligence development chiseled billions of dollars off its results for the first quarter of the year.
Nvidia's announcement could also be an encouraging signal for trade talks between the United States and China, the world's two largest economies.
Stocks of big U.S. banks, meanwhile, were mixed following their latest profit reports.
JPMorgan Chase fell 0.9% despite reporting a stronger profit than analysts expected, as CEO Jamie Dimon warned of risks to the economy because of tariffs and other concerns.
Citigroup rose 1.6%, and Wells Fargo fell 5.3% following their profit reports, which also topped analysts' expectations.
In stock markets abroad, indexes slipped in Europe after a mixed session in Asia. Indexes rose 1.6% in Hong Kong but fell 0.4% in Shanghai after a report said China's economic growth slowed only slightly last quarter despite pressure from Trump's tariffs.