Traders at work at the New York Stock Exchange on May 13, 2026.
new york stock exchange
S&P 500, year-to-date
Tech stocks outperformed the rest of the market as inflation concerns weighed on other sectors such as retail and banking as energy prices rose due to the Iran war. Nvidia The stock price rose more than 2%. micron technology It increased by more than 3%. of VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) 2% progress.
By contrast, roughly two-thirds of the S&P 500 index fell during the session, according to FactSet data. This included home improvement stores. home depot Other stocks related to business cycles such as major financial stocks JP Morgan.
“I think investors are thinking that the semiconductor trade is certainly taking on a life of its own, that the type of demand and the growth is structural, and that these other cyclical macro factors are not going to change things significantly,” Ross Mayfield, an investment strategist at Baird, told CNBC. “With everything going on in the world, especially during the oil crisis, I think investors felt safe hiding in these stocks because the (artificial intelligence) boom was coming regardless.”
Wednesday’s technology move came after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang accompanied President Donald Trump on a trip to China to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Mayfield said the decision signaled to investors that there could be a positive development in Nvidia’s ability to sell artificial intelligence chips in the Chinese market, and Mayfield said expectations for the meeting are still “pretty slim.”
Semiconductor stocks in particular have tumbled in recent days as enthusiasm for the AI industry picks up again, pushing the overall market back to all-time highs. But Mayfield isn’t convinced that the recent momentum will continue much longer, even though semiconductor stocks and AI infrastructure stocks are to some extent “acting completely on their own.”
“At some point, if these investors look up and realize that they are actually in a macro environment that is against them, they may look around and think, ‘Okay, it’s time to take a little profit, because the promise that the war will end soon is clearly not coming true,'” he said.
Indeed, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell from all-time highs on Tuesday following the release of better-than-expected U.S. consumer inflation data.
On Wednesday, the producer price index rose 1.4% in April. This was the biggest monthly increase since March 2022 and far exceeded the 0.5% rise expected by economists polled by Dow Jones. Additionally, overall inflation rose by 6% annually, the largest increase since December 2022. This number beat consensus expectations by 4.9%.
