Wall Street drifts lower in mixed trading

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes are drifting lower in mixed trading on Thursday.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.1%, though the market's moves have been erratic this week, with stocks repeatedly swinging between gains and losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 91 points, or 0.2%, as of 1:18 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was flat.

Technology stocks were relatively strong after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. reported a bigger jump in profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Chief Financial Officer Wendell Huang also said TSMC expects “continued strong demand for our leading-edge process technologies” going into the end of the year.

That’s important for the U.S. stock market because TSMC is a critical player at the center of the artificial-intelligence boom, making chips for such companies as Nvidia. TSMC’s stock that trades in Taiwan climbed 1.4%, though its stock that trades in the United States fell 1.3%.

Nvidia rose 0.7% and helped cushion the S&P 500's drop because it’s Wall Street’s most valuable stock.

AI stocks have been at the center of Wall Street’s surge to record after record this year, even though inflation is still high and the job market is slowing. AI stocks have shot so high that critics worry about another possible bubble, like the one that enveloped dot-com stocks and eventually imploded in 2000.

U.S. companies broadly are under pressure to deliver stronger profits after the S&P 500 surged 35% from a low in April. To justify those gains, which critics say made their stock prices too expensive, companies will need to show they’re making much more in profit and will continue to do so.

Salesforce climbed 5.3%. The company, which helps businesses manage their customers, unveiled a plan to deliver more than 10% in compounded annual revenue growth in coming years.

J.B. Hunt Transport Services trucked 20.3% higher after the freight company breezed past Wall Street’s profit targets in the third quarter.

On the losing side of Wall Street was Travelers, which sank 2.8%, even though the insurer reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its revenue fell short of forecasts.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise dropped 9.7% after giving long-term financial targets that some analysts found underwhelming.

Zions Bancorp. tumbled 9% after the bank said its profit for the third quarter will take a hit because of a $50 million charge-off related to loans made to borrowers facing legal actions brought by several banks and other lenders.

Scrutiny is rising on the quality of loans that banks and other lenders have made following last month’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing of First Brands Group, a supplier of aftermarket auto parts.

Crude prices swung modestly. President Donald Trump spoke with Russia's Vladimir Putin on Thursday and said they'll meet in Hungary to try to resolve the war in Ukraine. Russia's war in Ukraine has the United States trying to cut off purchases of Russian oil.

A barrel of U.S. crude gave up an early gain to drop 1% to $57.23. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 1% to $61.27 per barrel. In stock markets abroad, indexes climbed across much of Asia and Europe.

South Korea’s Kospi soared 2.5% on hopes that a trade deal may be coming between Seoul and Washington. Samsung Electronics and automakers Hyundai Motor and Kia Corp. were among the big gainers.

In China, where trade tensions have been rising with the United States, indexes added 0.1% in Shanghai and slipped 0.1% in Hong Kong.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 3.98% from 4.05% late Wednesday.

A report in the morning said manufacturing activity in the mid-Atlantic region is unexpectedly shrinking. It’s one of the few windows into the economy that the Federal Reserve has been getting recently as it tries to figure out whether high inflation or the weak job market should be the bigger concern for the economy.

The U.S. government’s latest shutdown is delaying important updates on the economy, such as a weekly update on unemployment claims that typically helps guides trading on Wall Street each Thursday. A day earlier, an important report on inflation was also delayed.

Fed officials have hinted that the job market may be the more important factor now in their thinking, which would clear the way for more cuts to interest rates. Expectations for such cuts have been a major driver for the U.S. stock market recently, but a jump in inflation could force the Fed to stop.

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