The S&P 500 moved slightly higher on Wednesday after oil prices fell and technology stocks rebounded, with investors looking ahead to the release of Micron Technology’s earnings after the bell.
The broad market index rose 0.1%, as did the Nasdaq Composite. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 15 points, or 0.1%.
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Oil prices continued their decline Wednesday. International benchmark Brent crude futures lost 3% to around $74 per barrel, seeing its lowest level since before the U.S. and Israel first launched airstrikes against Iran at the end of February. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures slid 3% to around $71.
Shares of Micron rose around 4%, and Sandisk was up nearly 3%. The two memory stocks tumbled 13% in the previous session. The Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM), down 14% on Tuesday, moved 3% higher in premarket trade.
Micron will report its latest earnings after the market closes on Wednesday. Analysts polled by FactSet see earnings of $20.83 per share on revenue of $35.75 billion.
Intel was up more than 1%, having shed 6% in Tuesday’s session. Qualcomm, which shed 8% Tuesday, was up more than 1% as well.
Wednesday’s moves come after a rout in the technology sector dragged the S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lower on Tuesday, with the averages losing 1.44% and 2.21%, respectively. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 45.87 points, or 0.09%.
Investors sold off semiconductor-adjacent stocks in Tuesday’s session, with the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) ending the day 7% lower.
Arguments around technical positioning exhaustion “may be true, but I would argue there might be some fundamental risk emerging as well,” said Dan Skelly, head of market research and strategy at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime” on Tuesday afternoon.
“We’ve heard about pricing wars among some of the model builders, we’ve heard about rental prices for old GPUs starting to decline, and we’ve also seen a shift in tone from Microsoft, who led the AI launch three years ago with ChatGPT and their partnership with Open AI,” he added. “Microsoft [is] now talking about a change in strategic direction for lower-cost models.”
Micron has had an astronomical run in 2026, with shares hitting a new all-time high on Monday and ending Tuesday at $1,051.77 per share. But Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets, warned the stock could fall after the earnings report.
It might go “down to $1,000. That’s going to sound like a big drawdown, but it’s something that traders will be watching as it starts to get in line with this 20-day moving average,” he said.
Alphabet was another winner on Wednesday, with shares rising nearly 1% after S&P Global said Tuesday that the company will soon replace Verizon in the Dow.
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