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Stocks were choppy Thursday, but the main indexes muscled into positive territory in mid-afternoon trading and stayed there through the close. Market participants kept a close eye on oil prices and Treasury yields, which stabilized after volatile price action early on, and panned earnings reports from blue-chip bellwethers Nvidia (NVDA) and Walmart (WMT).
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.6% at 50,285, the S&P 500 was 0.2% higher at 7,445, and the Nasdaq Composite had gained 0.09% to 26,293.
Helping lift stocks into the close were retreating oil prices. Front-month West Texas Intermediate crude futures hit an intraday high of $102.66 per barrel, but finished the session down nearly 2% at $96.35 after President Donald Trump said earlier that negotiations with Iran to end the war in the Middle East are in the “final stages.”
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Treasury yields also eased back from intraday highs. The yield on the 2-year Treasury topped out at 4.117% on Thursday before settling at 4.062%. Similar action was seen on the 10-year and 30-year Treasury yields.
Nvidia, Walmart drop after earnings
It’s been a busy week for blue-chip earnings and the latest results were poorly received. Nvidia, for one, fell 1.8% today even after the artificial intelligence (AI) chipmaker reported better-than-expected fiscal first-quarter results and gave stronger-than-anticipated guidance.
Kyle Rodda, senior financial market analyst at Capital.com, says this was “a garden variety beat — a better than expected top and bottom line with guidance above the Street estimate — and one that was well telegraphed following the very strong results from AI-hyperscalers earlier in the earnings season.”
The company also unveiled an $80 billion addition to its stock buyback program and hiked its quarterly dividend from 1 cent to 25 cents per share.
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Walmart was another Dow Jones stock that closed lower after earnings, sinking 7.3% on Thursday.
While the world’s largest retailer beat on the top and bottom lines for its fiscal 2027 first quarter, its second-quarter and full-year forecasts came in below the Street’s estimates.
“I think higher tax returns muted some of the pressure related to higher fuel prices and as we’re in a period of time right now where those tax refunds are largely not coming in, I think consumers are going to feel more of that pressure from higher fuel prices,” Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey told CNBC. “It’s something that we’re keeping a close eye on, but that expectation is built into our guidance for the second quarter.”
IBM soars 12% on Trump administration’s quantum computing stake
At the other end of the Dow was International Business Machines (IBM), which jumped 12.4% on reports the Trump administration will award the tech giant $1 billion as part of a broader investment in quantum-computing firms.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna has said the company’s quantum-computing segment could generate billions of dollars in revenue over the next decade — and this goal is likely to get a push from the Trump administration’s investment.
Big Blue is “in the early innings of unlocking benefits at the crossroads of AI and quantum,” says Wedbush, and this funding will allow for “a more stable pathway to advance quantum computing developments.”
Intuit spirals 20% on layoff news
Elsewhere in the tech space, Intuit (INTU) shares plunged 20% after the financial software firm said it is laying off 17% of its workforce. CEO Sasan Goodarzi said the decision “was not about AI,” but rather to streamline the company to make it more efficient and effective.
Intuit also reported its fiscal third-quarter results, which came in higher than expected. However, revenue from the company’s TurboTax segment just missed estimates for the three-month period that encompassed tax season.
The “7% year-over-year TurboTax growth came in well below expectations, adding fuel to bear concerns around AI-related disruption as pressure was most pronounced among price-sensitive DIY filers,” says UBS Global Research analyst Taylor McGinnis.
The analyst reiterated her Neutral (Hold) rating on the tech stock “given increased uncertainty around the growth trajectory,” and lowered her price target to $360 from $440.
