Wall Street closed mixed as semiconductor-related stocks pulled back on disappointment over Broadcom's earnings.
On Thursday in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 51,561.93, up 874.86 points, or 1.73%, from the previous trading day. The Dow set a new all-time high that day. The Standard & Poor's 500 index also rose 30.63 points, or 0.41%, to 7,584.31, while the Nasdaq Composite finished down 23.02 points, or 0.09%, at 26,830.96.
Among the top technology stocks by market capitalization, Nvidia gained 1.94%, while Apple (0.31%), Microsoft (0.17%), Amazon (1.51%), Google parent Alphabet (3.68%), and Facebook parent Meta (0.74%) all posted gains. In contrast, Broadcom dropped 12.59% and Micron also plunged 7.74%.
In the market that day, a number of semiconductor stocks fell because Broadcom reported second-quarter earnings below market expectations after the previous session's close. Broadcom also did not raise its annual artificial intelligence (AI) chip revenue outlook. As a result, in addition to Broadcom and Micron, SanDisk (-3.92%), AMD (-3.56%), Western Digital (-3.13%), Qualcomm (-2.62%), and Intel (-0.83%) declined one after another.
Unlike semiconductor stocks, which were hit by a flood of profit-taking, the healthcare sector and financials traced an upward curve and supported the indexes. In the healthcare sector, UnitedHealth rose 5.16% on the back of a target price increase from a Wall Street bank, while Eli Lilly (4.31%) and Merck (4.85%) also advanced. Bank stocks including JPMorgan (3.34%), Bank of America (3.38%), and Goldman Sachs (4.96%) all rose as well.
That day, after Blackstone announced that redemption requests for its flagship private credit fund declined toward the latter half of the second quarter, shares of private equity managers also rose sharply. Blackstone gained 7.50%, while Ares Management (6.01%) and KKR (5.45%) also posted strong gains. Blackstone said redemption requests for its flagship fund in the second quarter amounted to 10% of net assets and that it had capped redemptions at 5%.
International oil prices fell on news that Israel and Lebanon abruptly agreed to implement a ceasefire. The U.S. State Department said in a joint statement released immediately after talks held in Washington, D.C. the previous day that Israel and Lebanon had agreed on measures to implement the ceasefire. On the ICE Futures exchange in London, Brent crude futures for August delivery were at $95.03 per barrel, down 2.8% from the previous trading day. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures for July delivery fell 3.1% to $93.04 per barrel.
