STORY: U.S. stocks closed lower on Thursday, with the Dow dropping about three-quarters of a percent, the S&P 500 falling more than a third of a percent, and the Nasdaq finishing essentially flat but in the red.
Blockbuster earnings results from Meta Platforms and Microsoft had initially lifted Wall Street, but early gains faded following the latest U.S. economic data.
A report from the Commerce Department showed inflation picked up in June, with new tariffs pushing prices higher and stoking expectations that prices could climb further in the coming months.
Robert Conzo, Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director at The Wealth Alliance, said investors have a lot of data to digest this week.
“This is a unique week. You had GDP that just came out, it was annualized at 3%. In the first quarter it was -5. Both those numbers are skewed. PCE just came out, saw it tick up a little, year to date flat. Very interesting to understand what the Fed's going to do as a result of that. And then lets not forget jobs on Friday. Big big big number. ADP jobs by the way, just came out this week, and we were expecting 74,000; it came out at 104. That was a big surprise to the upside. That is an interesting number. Let's see how that plays out on the jobs number on Friday.”
After the closing bell, shares of Amazon fell in extended trading after the company forecast third-quarter sales that beat estimates but failed to live up to lofty expectations for its AWS cloud computing unit.
Shares of Apple jumped in after-hours trading, as the iPhone maker reported sales and profit that far surpassed expectations.
AI-related names were weaker on the session, with chipmakers Broadcom and Nvidia ending lower.
And shares of drugmakers were also weaker after the White House said Trump sent letters to the CEOs of 17 major pharmaceutical companies, urging immediate action to lower the cost of prescription drugs for Americans.
