Most of the US stock market rose on Friday after oil prices eased back to where they were before the war with Iran, but drops for stocks swept up in the mania around artificial intelligence technology kept the market in check.
- The Dow fell 44.51 points, or 0.1%, to 51,876.11, up 0.6% for the week.
- The S&P 500 fell 3.47 points, or less than 0.1%, to 7,354.02, down 2% for the week.
- The Nasdaq fell 60.99 points, or 0.2%, to 25,297.62, a drop of 4.6% for the week.
Stocks got a boost as the price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, dropped 3.8% to $72.60, the AP reports. That's lower than it was the day before the US and Israel attacked Iran, which eventually led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the curtailment of oil shipments worldwide. The easier oil prices helped stocks of companies with big fuel bills, and American Airlines Group climbed 1.7%. Health care stocks were some of the strongest forces pushing upward on the market after a committee of the European Medicines Agency recommended several medicines for approval and the extension for another dozen of their therapeutic indications. Eli Lilly, whose stock jumped 7.1%, has one of them.
Besides Lilly, nearly two out of every three stocks in the S&P 500 rose. But more drops for AI stocks helped to overshadow them. After soaring to tremendous heights and leading the market for years, AI stocks have been under pressure recently because of worries their profits can't possibly keep pace with the tremendous rallies for their stock prices. And those drops have an outsize effect because AI stocks have become Wall Street's largest and most influential, giving movements for their stock prices more weight on indexes than others. Micron Technology's drop of 6.7% was the heaviest weight on the market, for example. The maker of memory for computers has been a big winner this year, with its stock roughly quadrupling, because the AI boom has created a surge of demand for its products.
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