STAN CHOW
NEW YORK (AP) — Stock prices on the New York Stock Exchange set records Thursday even as the market was weighed down by a selloff in Oracle shares and concerns about a possible bubble in artificial intelligence technology.
The S&P 500 rose 14.32 points, or 0.2%, to 6,901.00, topping its previous all-time high it hit in October. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 646.26 points, or 1.3%, to 48,704.01, topping its own record set last month. The Nasdaq Composite trailed, falling 60.30, or 0.3%, to 23,593.86, as artificial intelligence stocks fell.
This is the market's latest return to record highs after a series of debilitating worries. Some of the most recent include concerns about what the Federal Reserve will do with interest rates and whether all the dollars poured into artificial intelligence chips and data centers will produce returns and productivity as strong as proponents promise.
Banks and other companies whose profits are closely tied to the strength of the economy also recovered. The Dow rose 2.5% for Goldman Sachs and 6.1% for Visa.
Walt Disney Co. shares gained 2.4% after OpenAI said the entertainment giant would invest $1 billion in it. It's part of a three-year deal that will also allow OpenAI to use more than 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars to create short videos requested by users.
But just because the US stock market is back at record highs doesn't mean all concerns have gone away.
Oracle shares fell 10.8%, briefly heading for their worst loss since 2001, when the dot-com bubble was still deflating.
Questions remain about whether Oracle's full investment in artificial intelligence technology will be worth it. Some analysts said they were surprised after the company announced late Wednesday how much it would spend on investments this fiscal year, and questions remained about how it would pay for it.
These doubts weigh on the AI industry as a whole, even as AI companies continue to make billions of dollars.
Shares of Nvidia, the chip company that has become a symbol of the artificial intelligence boom and raises nearly $20 billion every month, fell 1.5% on Thursday. It was the largest weight in the S&P 500 index due to its sheer size.
In the bond market, Treasury yields remained relatively steady after a report showed the number of U.S. workers filing for unemployment benefits rose more than economists expected last week, a possible sign of rising layoffs.
The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.14% from 4.13%.
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AP journalists Teresa Serohano and Matt Ott contributed to this report.
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor using a generative artificial intelligence tool.
