S&P 500, Nasdaq rise as tech, chipmakers rebound

[NEW YORK] US stocks ended mostly higher on Monday (Jun 8), led by gains in the Nasdaq and chipmakers as investors sought bargains after Friday’s sharp sell-off. Investors were also relieved after Iran and Israel said that they had halted attacks on each other.

The halt followed an appeal from US President Donald Trump that they immediately “stop shooting”. The attacks over 24 hours were the most direct confrontation between Iran and Israel since an April ceasefire in the war.

The Dow ended lower and stocks overall closed off the day’s highs. Apple shares eased late and finished 1.9 per cent lower even as the company unveiled a series of AI upgrades to Siri.

S&P 500 technology led sector advancers, rising 1.5 per cent, and the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index jumped 5.6 per cent, rebounding from Friday’s losses that wiped out US$1 trillion in market value for US-listed chipmakers.

Also, Intel shares gained 11.2 per cent after news website The Information reported that Alphabet’s Google had placed an order to manufacture more than three million tensor processing units in 2028.

“Today looks like a day where investors are doing a little bit of bargain hunting off the big tech sell-off,” said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments, a family investment office in New Vernon, New Jersey. “What normally happens after that is you get analysts coming in and reiterating buys.”

He added: “This market has been priced for quite a while for perfection, and these are certainly imperfect times. In that environment, you are going to see some back-and-forth, and some fear of prices having gone too far.”

Stocks sold off on Friday after hitting a series of record highs recently. Underwhelming results from chipmaker Broadcom last week had raised concerns that the chip sector was growing too fast, while much stronger-than-expected jobs data for May contributed to Friday’s rout, as traders priced in interest rate increases this year. Broadcom gained 2.8 per cent.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 80.77 points, or 0.16 per cent, to 50,786.01, the S&P 500 gained 21.99 points, or 0.3 per cent, to 7,405.73 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 220.23 points, or 0.86 per cent, to 25,929.66.

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Apple announced the Siri revamp at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference at its Cupertino, California, headquarters.

Investors may be having a “sell-on-the-news” response, said Bruce Zaro, managing director at Granite Wealth Management in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

“Perception has been for quite some time that Apple had been behind the curve as far as their AI offerings. That’s why the stock widely underperformed many of the other big techs for some time until recently,” he said.

SpaceX’s initial public offering on Friday could also prove a major test for US stock markets, with investors wary of possible overexuberance. Other big tech advancers included Marvell Technology, which jumped 9.6 per cent as the chipmaker was set to join the benchmark S&P 500 before the start of trading on Jun 22.

Eli Lilly gained 1.6 per cent after the drugmaker’s trial results showed its next-generation obesity drug, retatrutide, curbed sleep apnoea severity in addition to boosting weight loss and helping knee pain.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.01-to-1 ratio on the New York Stock Exchange. There were 129 new highs and 162 new lows on the NYSE. On the Nasdaq, 2,746 stocks rose and 2,142 fell as advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.28-to-1 ratio.

The S&P 500 posted 13 new 52-week highs and seven new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 105 new highs and 164 new lows.

Volume on US exchanges was 19.50 billion shares, compared with the roughly 20.3 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days. REUTERS