The stock market split in two directions Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rocketed to a fresh record high, jumping about 928 points, or 1.8%, as investors pulled money out of the artificial-intelligence trade and poured it into banks, retailers, and health-care names. At the same time, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite barely budged, rising around 0.1%, dragged down by a sharp drop in chip giant Broadcom. The broad S&P 500 landed in between, up roughly 0.5%. The session played out against a tense political backdrop in Washington over the ongoing war with Iran, even as oil prices eased.
The day’s biggest story on Wall Street was the rotation. Broadcom tumbled about 14% after the chipmaker reported fiscal second-quarter revenue that fell short of forecasts. That miss spooked traders who have ridden AI-linked stocks to record after record this year, and many trimmed their bets on the group. Fellow chipmaker Micron Technology also fell. With money leaving technology, it flowed into corners of the market that had been left behind.
Those overlooked names led the Dow higher. UnitedHealth Group jumped more than 5% to pace the blue-chip index. JPMorgan Chase climbed about 4%, and Walmart added roughly 1%. Outside the Dow, warehouse retailer Costco rose more than 1% and drugmaker Eli Lilly gained more than 5%. The pattern was clear: this was a day for steady, everyday businesses — lenders, stores, and health insurers — rather than the high-flying tech names that have dominated 2026.
The political news out of Washington gave traders plenty to weigh. The Republican-led House voted 215-208 on Wednesday to approve a resolution aimed at limiting President Donald Trump’s ability to continue military operations against Iran, with four Republicans joining Democrats. Trump dismissed it as a “meaningless vote” and called the four Republicans who crossed over “grandstanders.” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said there had been no significant progress in recent talks, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview that Israel and the United States were prepared to return to military action if necessary.
Despite the heated rhetoric, oil prices fell. West Texas Intermediate crude dropped to around $95 a barrel in the morning and slid further during the session, while global benchmark Brent crude eased to about $96.70. Falling oil is welcome news for households and for the trucking, airline, and manufacturing companies that burn large amounts of fuel, and it helped support the non-tech stocks that led the day.
The market also had one eye on a wave of blockbuster public offerings. SpaceX, the rocket company run by Elon Musk, priced its initial public offering at $135 a share, an offering worth about $75 billion that would value the company near $1.77 trillion. That would make SpaceX the seventh-largest U.S. company by market value, ahead of Tesla, and the largest IPO in history when it debuts on the Nasdaq on June 12. Goldman Sachs is leading the deal, joined by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase. Musk is expected to retain more than 82% of the voting control.
The appetite for new listings showed up Thursday in another debut. Quantinuum, a quantum-computing company formed from Honeywell’s quantum division and Britain’s Cambridge Quantum, opened at $68 a share after pricing its upsized IPO at $60, above its expected range. The company raised about $1.68 billion and was valued near $17.6 billion at its first trade.
On the research side, analysts remain broadly upbeat on the year’s tech-driven rally, even after Thursday’s wobble. Julian Emanuel, senior managing director at Evercore ISI, has a year-end target of 7,750 on the S&P 500, arguing that a small handful of AI leaders has been powering the index’s gains. Separately, Morgan Stanley told clients it sees room for Apple shares to rise ahead of the company’s developer conference next week.
The bigger event for everyone is still ahead. The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its May employment report Friday at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. It follows data from payroll firm ADP on Wednesday showing private employers added 122,000 jobs in May, the strongest month in over a year. A strong government number could ease worries about the economy but complicate the case for interest-rate cuts; a weak one could do the reverse.
After the closing bell, a fresh round of earnings was due from software and data firms including Samsara, Rubrik, and Planet Labs, giving traders more to digest before Friday’s main event.
Wall Street — JBizNews Desk
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