U.S. stocks are drifting around their records on Thursday as technology stocks keep rising and as Wall Street keeps ignoring the shutdown of the U.S. government.
The S&P 500 rose 0.1%, coming off its latest all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 68 points, or 0.2%, as of 1:58 p.m. ET, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% higher and hovering above its own record.
Thursdays on Wall Street typically mean investors are reacting to the latest weekly tally of U.S. workers applying for unemployment benefits. But D.C.’s shutdown means this week’s report on jobless claims has been delayed. An even more consequential report, Friday’s monthly tally of jobs created and destroyed across the economy, will likely also not arrive on schedule.
That increases uncertainty when much on Wall Street is riding on investors’ hopes that the job market will slow by a precise amount: enough to convince the Federal Reserve to keep cutting interest rates, but not by so much that it leads to a recession.
“The Fed has been on record that they are very data dependent, and the lack of data from public sources is likely to be problematic,” said Brian Rehling, head of global fixed-income strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.
So far, the U.S. stock market has looked past the delays of such data. Shutdowns of the U.S. government have tended not to hurt the economy or stock market much, and the thinking is that this one could be similar, even if President Donald Trump has threatened large-scale firings of federal workers this time around.
That left corporate announcements as the main drivers of trading on Thursday.
Stocks in the chip and artificial-intelligence industries climbed after OpenAI announced partnerships with South Korean companies for Stargate, a $500 billion project aimed at building AI infrastructure.
Samsung Electronics rose 3.5% in Seoul, and SK Hynix jumped 9.9%.
The announcement also sent ripples around the world. On Wall Street, Advanced Micro Devices climbed 3.7%, and Broadcom gained 2.2%. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., a major maker of chips, saw its stock that trades in the United States slip 0.3%.
Excitement around AI and the massive spending underway because of it has been a major reason the U.S. stock market has hit record after record, along with hopes for easier interest rates. But AI stocks have become so dominant, and so much money has poured into the industry, that worries are rising about a potential bubble that could eventually lead to disappointment for investors.
Occidental Petroleum fell 7.8% after it agreed to sell its chemical business, OxyChem, to Berkshire Hathaway for $9.7 billion in cash. It could be the final big purchase for Berkshire Hathaway with famed investor Warren Buffett as its CEO.
Fair Isaac jumped 20.7% after announcing a program that will allow mortgage lenders to access and distribute FICO credit scores directly to their customers, cutting out such big credit bureaus as TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian.
TransUnion’s stock tumbled 9.5%, while Equifax slid 7.7%. The stock of the United Kingdom’s Experian fell 3.6% in London.
London’s FTSE 100 edged down by 0.2%, but indexes were much stronger across Europe and Asia. South Korea’s Kospi jumped 2.7%, for one of the biggest gains following the big jumps for Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury ticked down to 4.09%, from 4.12% late Wednesday.
—By Stan Choe, AP business writer
AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.