By Sinéad Carew and Marc Jones NEW YORK/LONDON, July 16 Tech-heavy equity indexes around the world fell on Thursday as investors offloaded chip stocks, while oil futures gave up earlier gains even as the U.S. and Iran stepped up attacks.
Chip stocks fell from Asia to the U.S., as higher-than-expected 77% earnings growth from Taiwanese chip manufacturing giant TSMC was not enough to impress investors who have heavily leaned into technology stocks related to artificial intelligence. “That tells you the AI trade isn’t being priced on growth anymore
It’s being priced on perfection. Any earnings report that’s merely great, instead of flawless, gets sold,” said Gene Goldman, chief investment officer at Cetera in El Segundo, California. U.S. retail sales increased marginally in June as lower gasoline prices weighed on receipts at service stations, though consumers continued to support underlying spending.
The sales increase of 0.2% was in line with the mean economist expectation. And after two days of U.S. equity gains on soft inflation data, Goldman said Thursday’s trade represents “the market catching its breath, not changing its mind.” On Wall Street at 12:13 p.m. ET (1613 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 9.02 points to 52,802.29, the S&P 500 fell 27.64 points, or 0.36%, to 7,544.76 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 250.25 points, or 0.95%, to 26,018.97.