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Wall Street closes higher, chip stocks remain under pressure

Major US indices recover on Thursday, while investors continue to distinguish between technology companies and other sectors.

Follow-up to: Global tech market falters amid doubts over AI boom Thursday, 15 October 2026, 18:14

US stock markets reversed initial losses to post modest gains on Thursday. The closing levels confirm a recovery in the broader market, but several chip stocks ended lower again.

The S&P 500 closed at 7,744.06 points, a rise of 0.33 per cent. The Dow Jones gained 1.08 per cent to 52,177.69 points and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.08 per cent to 26,713.03 points. Reuters and AP report the same closing levels for 15 October. The US trading day thus ended considerably more favourably than the morning's trading had suggested.

The preceding sell-off centred partly on the financing of artificial intelligence. Companies are investing heavily in chips, computing capacity and data centres, sometimes with borrowed money. Yahoo Finance described on Thursday how concerns about debt and higher financing costs coincided with unease over inflation. That formed the backdrop to our earlier report on the global decline in technology stocks. The new development is that US markets closed higher.

According to Reuters, money shifted into sectors including healthcare and consumer stocks on Thursday. Share price movements in those sectors helped lift the broad index, while parts of the technology sector lagged behind. A rising benchmark index therefore does not automatically mean that concerns about AI companies have disappeared. The market picture consisted of differing movements that partly offset one another, rather than an even recovery across all major stocks.

Among chip companies, Nvidia remained 1.8 per cent lower, according to Reuters. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index lost 0.9 per cent, falling for the seventh consecutive trading day. That is relevant when assessing the recovery: the very sector at the centre of the turmoil still ended in the red. The Nasdaq's small gain therefore masks continued weakness in an important part of technology trading.

Movements also varied widely within the AI sector. AP reports that AI computing capacity provider CoreWeave initially fell sharply during trading, but ultimately closed 5.9 per cent higher. Chipmaker TSMC's US-listed shares pared a larger loss during the session to 1.8 per cent. Such reversals show how volatile trading was on Thursday, without in themselves proving that confidence has recovered sustainably.

Meanwhile, US government bond yields fell in the bond market. Yahoo Finance had already noted that movement during the trading day and described how investors sought out government bonds while technology stocks fluctuated. Concerns about financing did not disappear from the coverage as a result. The same outlet pointed to the combination of debt at AI companies and uncertainty over the Federal Reserve's next interest rate moves.

Moreover, the day's recovery has not erased all of this week's losses. According to AP's weekly overview, the S&P 500 is still down 0.9 per cent after Thursday and the Nasdaq is down 2.4 per cent. The Dow, by contrast, retains a weekly gain of around 1 per cent. The closing figures thus mainly show an uneven recovery: gains for the major indices on Thursday, alongside a weaker week for the technology-focused market.

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