New York (AFP) – Wall Street stocks mostly fell Friday as tech shares remained under pressure following the shock downfall of Nvidia’s chief Jensen Huang, while the dollar rose following additional data that showed US inflation is persisting. Huang, perhaps the tech industry’s most recognized booster of artificial intelligence, stepped down Thursday following revelations of extramarital affairs, including with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy. The shakeup has battered shares of Nvidia, until recently the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, with the company dropping another two percent on Friday.
On Friday, two Nvidia rivals that had rallied on Thursday — AMD and Broadcom — also stumbled. AMD sank 8.8 percent while Broadcom fell nearly five. Angelo Kourkafas of Edward Jones attributed the pullback in those two stocks to profit-taking. “There is certainly a defensive leadership as we look at the sectors, which points to some caution,” said Kourkafas, who expects AI to be in the spotlight again next week when Nvidia reports quarterly results and Anthropic makes its Wall Street debut.
Elsewhere, the Producer Price Index — which measures the prices that farms, factories, and other makers of goods receive — rose by 0.3 percent in October from the previous month. The report comes on the heels of a hot consumer prices reading earlier in the week that also highlighted the impact of increased energy costs due to the US–Iran war. Investors expect the US Federal Reserve to lift interest rates by at least a quarter percentage point next month to try to rein in stubborn inflation. Those expectations helped lift the dollar, which reached its highest level against the euro since April 2025.
US wholesale inflation data may have been better than some analysts had expected, but was “not necessarily as comforting as it appeared when taking into account the upward revisions for September,” said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare. The September monthly gain was revised up to 1.4 percent from 1.3 percent, and the annual reading for October hit 6.5 percent, the highest since November 2022. “The key takeaway from the report is that inflation at the wholesale level is still a big problem,” O’Hare said.
Shares in Microsoft recovered from early losses after the tech titan struggled to fix an issue that left users around the world without its Outlook email app. Asian and European stocks traded mixed. Oil prices wobbled after the International Energy Agency said global oil supplies were expected to exceed demand in the fourth quarter, as more tankers transit the Strait of Hormuz despite the ongoing conflict with Iran.
– Key figures at around 2120 GMT –
New York – DOW: UP 0.1 percent at 52,347.55 (close)
New York – S&P 500: DOWN 0.4 percent at 7,561.67 (close)
New York – Nasdaq Composite: DOWN 0.9 percent at 25,136.27 (close)
London – FTSE 100: UP 0.4 percent at 10,902.56 (close)
Paris – CAC 40: UP 0.1 percent at 8,368.91 (close)
Frankfurt – DAX: DOWN 0.1 percent at 26,749.95 (close)
Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 0.5 percent at 61,142.35 (close)
Seoul – Kospi: DOWN 1.0 percent at 5,290.53 (close)
Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 1.6 percent at 23,637.60 (close)
Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 0.6 percent at 3,634.35 (close)
Brent North Sea crude: UP less than 0.1 percent at $95.84 per barrel
West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 0.2 percent at $88.56 per barrel
Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.1021 from $1.1055 on Thursday
Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.3210 from $1.3235
Dollar/yen: DOWN at 159.83 yen from 159.84 yen
Euro/pound: DOWN at 83.43 from 83.54 pence
© 2024 AFP
