Wall Street’s lull stretches to a second day as indexes finish mixed
Steam rises from a vent at a work site near the New York Stock Exchange, center, on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, in New York. World shares are mostly higher after U.S. stocks held relatively steady on Wall Street. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)
NEW YORK — Wall Street’s lull stretched into a second day, as U.S. stocks drifted to a mixed close on Wednesday.
The S&P 500 finished virtually unchanged after flipping between modest gains and losses through the day. It edged down by 0.03 to 5,187.67. It was coming off a very slight gain from Tuesday, which followed a big three-day winning streak.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 172.13 points, or 0.4 percent, to 39,056.39, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 29.80, or 0.2 percent, to 16,302.76.
Uber Technologies slumped 5.7 percent after reporting worse results for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also gave a forecasted range for bookings in the current quarter whose midpoint fell below analysts’ estimates.
Shopify tumbled 18.6 percent despite reporting better profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The company, which helps businesses sell things online, said its revenue growth would likely slow this quarter and that it would likely make less profit off each $1 in revenue.
Match Group sank 5.4 percent despite topping profit expectations. The company behind Tinder, Hinge, and other apps for connecting people gave a forecast for revenue in the current quarter that fell short of what analysts were expecting. It said its efforts to make Tinder better for women and Gen Z customers, in particular, have hurt some performance measurements in the short term.
READ: Tinder, other Match dating apps encourage compulsive use, lawsuit claims
Intel fell 2.2 percent after saying the U.S. Commerce Department revoked licenses for exports to a Chinese customer. That could cause its revenue for the current quarter to fall below the midpoint of the forecasted range it had earlier given.
Top gainers
They helped to offset Lyft, which revved 7.1 percent higher after it topped expectations for profit and revenue. It said growth was particularly strong for early-morning, commute, and weekend-evening trips.
Reddit was another winner and rose 4 percent after delivering its first quarterly report as a publicly traded company. It reported a milder loss and better revenue than expected, while also giving a stronger-than-expected forecast for revenue in the current quarter.
Arista Networks climbed 6.5 percent for the biggest gain in the S&P 500 after topping expectations for both profit and revenue.
Most companies have been reporting stronger profits for the start of the year than analysts expected. That and newly revived hopes for coming cuts to interest rates by the Federal Reserve have helped the U.S. stock market to recover from its rough April.
Treasury yields have largely been easing since Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said last week that the central bank remains closer to cutting its main interest rate than hiking it, despite a string of stubbornly high readings on inflation this year.
A cooler-than-expected jobs report on Friday, meanwhile, suggested the U.S. economy could pull off the balancing act of staying solid enough to avoid a bad recession without being so strong that it keeps inflation too high.
READ: US employers scaled back hiring in April
The yield on the 10-year Treasury recovered some of those losses. It rose to 4.49 percent from 4.46 percent late Tuesday.
The yield on the two-year Treasury, which moves closer to expectations for action by the Fed, ticked up to 4.84 percent from 4.83 percent.
The stock market also found some support following April’s weakness as companies bought back more shares of their own stock, according to Mark Hackett, Nationwide’s chief of investment research. He said the market’s zig-zag pattern since March “is likely to remain as we search for a catalyst.”
READ: Asian shares mixed after calm day on Wall Street
In stock markets abroad, indexes fell across much of Asia. Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 1.6 percent after Nintendo forecast that its net profit would fall in the upcoming fiscal year and announced that news of a successor product to its popular Switch device will be made by March 2025.
Stock indexes rose modestly in Europe.
