Wall Street ended mixed on Tuesday as investors digested mostly positive quarterly results from big U.S. banks, comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and an ongoing U.S.-China trade war.
The S&P 500 turned lower after U.S. President Donald Trump said Washington was considering tariffs, including in relation to cooking oil.
Market Snapshot
The S&P 500 declined 0.16% to end the session at 6,644.31 points. The Nasdaq declined 0.76% to 22,521.70 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.44% to 46,270.46 points. SEALSQ Corp rose 25%; Lithium Americas Corp. rose 19%; Energy Fuels rose 10%; Bitfarms Ltd. rose 9%; Tesla Motors fell 2%.
Market Movers
JPMorgan Chase was down 1.9% even though it bank reported third-quarter earnings of $5.07 a share on revenue of $46.4 billion, beating analysts' forecasts of $4.85 a share on revenue of $45.5 billion.
Wells Fargo reported third-quarter earnings of $1.66 a share, topping estimates of $1.55. The bank raised its target for return on tangible common equity to 17% to 18%. Shares climbed 7.2%.
Goldman Sachs posted third-quarter profit that rose 37% from a year earlier, topping analysts' forecasts, as its trading desks, dealmakers, and money managers recorded strong results. Net earnings of $4.1 billion were up from $2.99 billion a year earlier. Per-share earnings were $12.25 a share; Wall Street was calling for $11.03, according to FactSet. The stock fell 2%.
Citigroup reported third-quarter earnings that rose 16% from a year earlier. The bank posted earnings of $1.86 a share, topping analysts' estimates. Revenue from Citigroup's banking unit grew 34% from a year earlier. Shares gained 3.9%.
Advanced Micro Devices rose 0.8% after Oracle said it would deploy 50,000 AMD chips starting in the third quarter of 2026 to help customers scale their artificial-intelligence capabilities. Shares of Oracle fell 2.9%.
Wal-Mart jumped 5%. The world's largest retailer announced it was partnering with OpenAI to allow customers to buy its products through ChatGPT using Instant Checkout.
BlackRock reported third-quarter adjusted earnings of $11.55 a share, beating analysts' estimates of $11.30. Assets under management at the end of the quarter were $13.46 trillion, up 17% from a year earlier. Shares rose 3.4%.
Ford gained 0.9%. Starting this week, the auto maker is temporarily cutting production of at least five models including the Expedition and Lincoln Navigator following a fire at a key aluminum supplier's plant.
General Motors rose 2.8% after booking a $1.6 billion charge on its electric-vehicle business and pledging to reduce its manufacturing capacity. The company said it expected EV adoption to slow following policy changes "including the termination of certain consumer tax incentives for EV purchases and the reduction in the stringency of emissions regulations."
Domino's Pizza rose 3.9% after the pizza chain posted adjusted fiscal third-quarter earnings that topped forecasts as revenue rose 6.2% to $1.15 billion and beat expectations of $1.14 billion. U.S. franchises saw same-store sales increase 5.3%.
Broadcom fell 3.5%. The stock closed up 9.9% on Monday after the semiconductor and software company announced it was working with OpenAI, the maker of chatbot ChatGPT, to develop and deploy 10 gigawatts of custom artificial-intelligence accelerators. Broadcom will provide Ethernet and other connectivity solutions at OpenAI's facilities and partner data centers. The companies are slated to begin deploying the systems in the second half of 2026 and complete the deployments in 2029. Broadcom has gained 48% this year.
Shares of MP Materials Corp., the rare-earths miner, gained 3.8% to hit a fresh record high. Shares surged 21% on Monday. The stock has extended a rally from last week after China tightened export controls on the minerals.
LM Ericsson Telephone's U.S.-listed shares soared 21% after the Swedish telecommunications company posted better-than-expected third-quarter earnings and suggested it could hike its shareholder payouts. The company also announced a five-year deal with the UK's Vodafone.
Navitas Semiconductor Corp surged 26%. The chip company said it was making progress in developing purpose-built power devices to enable chip maker Nvidia's architecture.
Market News
Fed's Powell Says Economy May Be on Firmer Footing, but Job Market Weak
The U.S. labor market remained mired in its low-hiring, low-firing doldrums through September, though the economy "may be on a somewhat firmer trajectory than expected," Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Tuesday, noting that policymakers will take a "meeting-by-meeting" approach to interest rate cuts as they balance job market weakness with above-target inflation.
Powell, in remarks to a National Association for Business Economics conference in Philadelphia, acknowledged the economic dilemma that has split U.S. central bank officials almost evenly among those concerned most about still-high and potentially rising inflation, and those worried the labor market may be facing a fast slide downward.
Intel Signals Return to AI Race with New Chip to Launch Next Year
Intel announced on Tuesday a new artificial intelligence chip for the data center that it plans to launch next year, in a renewed push to break into the AI chip market.
The new chip (GPU) will be optimized for energy efficiency and support a wide range of uses such as running AI applications, or inference, Intel Chief Technology Officer Sachin Katti said at the Open Compute Summit on Tuesday.
MacKenzie Scott Cuts Amazon Stake by 42%, Bloomberg News Reports
Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has reduced the size of her stake in Amazon.com by 42% since last year, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing a regulatory filing.
Scott, the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, holds 81.1 million shares in the company, according to the latest disclosure dated September 30, down 58 million from a year ago, according to the news report.
Broadcom to Launch New Networking Chip, as Battle with Nvidia Intensifies
Broadcom is launching a new networking chip on Tuesday that will help companies build artificial intelligence computing systems by stringing together hundreds of thousands of chips that crunch data, deepening its rivalry with NVIDIA.
The chip, called the Thor Ultra, enables computing infrastructure operators to deploy far more chips than they otherwise could, allowing them to build and run the large models used to power AI apps such as ChatGPT.
