Chip maker and tech stocks had a rough Thursday, falling in the afternoon and many never regained their losses before the closing bell. Shares in other sectors ended the regular session mixed.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 54 points, or 0.15%, while the S&P 500 dropped 0.3%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 0.7% and the Technology Select Sector SPDR Exchange-Traded Fund (XLK), traded on the NYSE Arca, dropped 0.8%.
One chip maker that felt the pain was Nvidia (NVDA), a key stock in the tech fund. Shares were down 4.4%. Apple (AAPL), the fund’s largest holding, declined 0.45%.
Driving the market were factors both in the U.S. and abroad.
Weekly jobless claims dropped to 360,000, the Labor Department reported, a new pandemic low. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testified for a second day on Capitol Hill and maintained that the Fed isn’t close to pulling back on support for the economy.
China’s growth slowed to 7.9% over a year earlier in the three months ending in June, an indication that the powerful strong rebound from the pandemic was starting to normalize. The GDP reading also missed estimates of 8.2%. But the data were still robust; industrial production rose 8.3% year-over-year, beating estimates of 7.8%, a positive indicator for economic activity around the globe. China’s CSI 300 index finished up 1.3%. A mostly positive day for Asian stocks was bucked by a 1.1% drop for the Nikkei 225 .
