Wall Street ends mixed as investors weigh rates and growth

Wall Street finished Wednesday with a split verdict: the S&P 500 rose 28.81 points, or 0.4%, to 7,572.40, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 150.37 points, or 0.3%, to 52,658.64, while the Nasdaq 100 fell 0.3%. The uneven finish showed investors leaning on better inflation news and Big Tech support, but not enough to shake concern about how long growth can keep carrying prices higher.

Soft inflation data and producer-price figures helped steady sentiment by reducing the likelihood of a Federal Reserve rate hike at the upcoming meeting. That mattered because the rate path remains one of the main brakes on Wall Street optimism: lower inflation can keep the policy outlook from tightening further, but traders still want confirmation that price pressures are easing without a sharp slowdown in demand.

The day’s strongest support came from megacap technology names, which helped push indexes higher. Apple and other growth stocks gained ground, while chip stocks took a hit, a split that kept the broader market from building a clean rally. Trading Economics characterized the session as mixed because support from softer inflation was offset by a selloff in chipmakers, underscoring how narrowly the market is trading leadership.

Earnings added another layer to the hesitation. Major indexes rose after several positive earnings reports, and ASML delivered an encouraging update on the artificial-intelligence boom, reporting record orders in its latest quarter and lifting its sales guidance for the second time. That kind of momentum in a capital-intensive part of the market has kept AI enthusiasm alive, but it has not fully spilled into the rest of the market, where investors are still weighing whether corporate results can justify valuations if rates stay elevated for longer.

The result was a session that looked less like a broad risk-on move than a careful recalibration. Lower inflation gave investors room to hope for easier policy later, but the drop in chipmakers showed how quickly that confidence can be checked when growth expectations, earnings outlooks and rate fears all collide in the same trading day.