NEW YORK — Nvidia and other technology companies are propping up Wall Street on Monday, while most other stocks fall following a discouraging signal on the health of U.S. manufacturing.
The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged in morning trading and was holding near its all-time high set last week, even though four out of every five stocks within the index were falling. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 186 points, or 0.4%, as of 10:05 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% higher.
Nvidia helped support the market after rising 2.3%. It was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500, much like it has been for the year so far. The chip company has been soaring because of the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology, as have companies across the AI industry.
Microsoft added 0.7% after it announced a $9.7 billion contract with AI cloud service provider IREN that will give it access to some of Nvidia’s chips. The five-year deal will help Microsoft as it looks to keep up with AI demand. IREN jumped 18.7%.
Palantir Technologies, which came into the day with a stunning 165% gain for the year so far, rose another 1.7%. Traders are pushing up the AI darling in the final hours before the data platform company reports its latest quarterly results after trading closes for the day.
It and companies across the U.S. stock market will need to hit expectations in order to justify the big gains for their stocks since hitting a low in April. Criticism has been rising that the broad U.S. market, and AI stocks in particular, have become too expensive and could be inflating into a dangerous bubble similar to the 2000 dot-com bust.
For the most part, companies have been meeting high expectations for profits. Four out of every five companies in the S&P 500 that have delivered their results for the latest quarter so far have topped analysts’ forecasts, according to FactSet. With the reporting season roughly two-thirds done, companies in the S&P 500 are on track to deliver healthy growth of nearly 11% from a year earlier.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Kenvue climbed 7.4% after Kimberly-Clark agreed to buy the company behind Tylenol, Band-Aids and Listerine in a deal valuing it at $48.7 billion. Kimberly-Clark, which makes Kleenex and Huggies, will pay for the deal in cash and stock, and its shares fell 12.4%.
On the losing end of Wall Street was Beyond Meat, which fell 13%. The plant-based meat company delayed its report for the latest quarter’s results to Nov. 11 from Tuesday, saying it needs more time to assess how big of a non-cash charge it will take against its earnings due to issues it had previously disclosed with some of its assets.
Beyond Meat’s stock has been mostly falling since topping $4 in July, but it went on a wild ride last month where it suddenly soared from 52 cents to $3.62 in three days, a nearly 600% surge. It got swept up in the “meme stock” craze, where prices can rise solely due to online hype rather than any change to the company’s actual business.
A more staid performance came from Berkshire Hathaway, the business run by famed investor Warren Buffett. Its stock slipped 0.8% after the company reported one of its last sets of quarterly results with Buffett as CEO. The 95-year-old investor will relinquish the title in January.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.09% from 4.11% late Friday.
It dropped after a report said manufacturing activity across the United States shrank by more last month than economists expected. The stumble appears to be “a reflection of continuing economic uncertainty,” according to Susan Spence, chair of the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing business survey committee.
“Wonder has turned to concern regarding how the tariff threats are affecting our business,” a chemical products manufacturer told the ISM’s survey. “Orders are down across most divisions, and we’ve lowered our financial expectations for 2025.”
“In general, business is really strained,” another manufacturer told the survey.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe following a stronger finish in Asia.
South Korea’s Kospi jumped 2.8% to another record. SK Hynix soared nearly 11%, helped by recent moves to team up with Nvidia in developing the country’s artificial intelligence infrastructure and capabilities. South Korean shipbuilders also logged gains after China said it would cancel added port fees on U.S.-invested or U.S. flagged vessels after U.S. President Donald Trump met last week with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
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