NEW YORK, Jan 23: The US stock market is drifting lower today, as a zigzag week full of loud threats and pullbacks heads toward a quieter close.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.2 per cent and is on track to finish a second straight week with a modest loss. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 252 points, or 0.5 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1 per cent lower.
Intel tugged the market lower after tumbling 14.7 per cent. The chip company reported better results for the end of 2025 than analysts expected. But more attention was on its forecast for the first three months of this year, which fell short of Wall Street’s expectations.
Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner said shortages of supplies are affecting the entire industry, and Intel expects available supply to hit a bottom early this year before improving in the spring and beyond. CEO Lip-Bu Tan highlighted the company’s opportunities created by the artificial-intelligence era.
Moves in the US bond and foreign-currency markets, meanwhile, were more modest following big swings earlier in the week. Global investors showed some inclination to dump US investments after President Donald Trump initially threatened 10 per cent tariffs for European countries that he said opposed his having Greenland. Not only did prices for US Treasury bonds tumble, sending their yields higher, the value of the US dollar also slid against other currencies.
Markets recovered after Trump said Wednesday he had reached “the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland” and called off the tariffs, though few details are available about it.
Gold’s price nevertheless rose again Friday and got closer to USD 5,000 per ounce in a signal that investors are still looking for something safer to own amid all the uncertainty.
On Wall Street, Capital One Financial sank 3.8 per cent after reporting a weaker profit for the end of 2025 than analysts expected. It also said it was buying Brex, which helps businesses issue corporate cards, for USD 5.15 billion in cash and stock.
That helped overshadow a 4.1 per cent rise for SLB, which reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The oil field services provider also raised its dividend 3.5 per cent, while CEO Olivier Le Peuch said revenue improved from the prior quarter across all its four geographies for the first time since the spring of 2024.
CSX climbed 3.7 per cent even though the railroad reported a weaker profit than analysts expected. Some analysts highlighted the company’s forecast for how much more operating profit it expects to retain from each USD 1 of revenue during 2026.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.25 per cent from 4.26 per cent late Thursday.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe after rising across much of Asia.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 added 0.3 per cent after the Bank of Japan kept its key interest rate unchanged, as many investors expected. The central bank just raised the policy rate to 0.75 per cent in December and has been slowly pulling it higher from below zero.
Global markets have calmed following a surge higher for long-term government bond yields in Japan early in the week, sparked by worries that Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi might make moves that would add heavily to the government’s already big debt. (AP)
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