Wall Street ends mostly flat in choppy trade as Treasury yields ease
NEW YORK : US stocks closed a choppy session little changed on Thursday, erasing initial declines as Treasury yields eased off recent highs after the House of Representatives passed US President Donald Trump's tax and spending bill.
Recent concerns about the US deficit have pushed up Treasury yields and pressured stocks, but longer-dated yields fell on Thursday, allowing stocks to take a breather. The benchmark US 10-year note yield fell 5.4 basis points to 4.543% after hitting its highest since February.
The benchmark S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended flat, while the Nasdaq edged higher. All three major Wall Street indexes had posted their biggest single-day percentage drops in a month on Wednesday as Treasury yields spiked on US debt worries.
The Republican-controlled House voted by a slim margin to pass the bill, which would fulfill many of Trump's campaign pledges to his political base, but will increase the US$36.2 trillion US debt pile by US$3.8 trillion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Investors are also weighing the impact of Trump's tariffs on US imports, including on consumer prices.
'The problem today was the tax bill, which appears to have passed,' said George Young, partner and portfolio manager at Villere & Co in New Orleans. 'But we are thinking about bigger potential problems and the two main things on the table are tariffs and interest rates.'
'The market hates uncertainty and we've still got this overhang of the tariffs and the bond market, which is totally apolitical and totally international,' Young added.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell just 1.35 points to 41,859.09, the S&P 500 lost merely 2.60 points or 0.04% at 5,842.01 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 53.09 points, or 0.28%, at 18,925.74.
Eight out of 11 S&P 500 subsectors finished lower, led by utilities, healthcare, energy and consumer staples stocks. Consumer discretionary, communication services and technology stocks advanced.
Megacap growth stocks, including Nvidia, Amazon and Tesla, gained. Alphabet was 1.3% firmer after touching a nearly three-month high. Apple ended down 0.36%.
Snowflake jumped more than 13% after the cloud computing firm raised its fiscal 2026 product revenue forecast.
Analog Devices fell 4.6% despite the semiconductor manufacturer beating Wall Street estimates for quarterly results.
Shares of solar energy companies including First Solar dropped as Trump's tax bill is expected to end a number of green-energy subsidies. First Solar finished down 4.3%.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.17-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. There were 68 new highs and 99 new lows on the NYSE.
The S&P 500 posted four new 52-week highs and nine new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 49 new highs and 109 new lows.
Volume on US exchanges was 16.09 billion shares, compared with the 17.56 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.
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