LDN - Business

Stock market today: World shares are mixed after slight gains on Wall Street

[February 27, 2025] By ELAINE KURTENBACH

BANGKOK (AP) — World shares were mixed Thursday after U.S. stock indexes drifted to a lackluster finish, with the S&P 500 closing just an iota higher.

Germany's DAX lost 0.9% to 22,584.04 and the CAC 40 in Paris slipped 0.3%, to 8,122.00. Britain's FTSE 100 was nearly unchanged at 8,734.36.

The future for the S&P 500 was up 0.5% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.2%.

Later Thursday, the U.S. Commerce Department will issue its third and final estimate of how the U.S. economy performed in the final three months of 2024. The economy still appears to be in solid shape, and growth is continuing, though uncertainty is rising about the future. Another report on Friday will show how the gauge of inflation that the Federal Reserve prefers to use has been behaving.

Worries have been rising about whether U.S. shoppers may cut back on their spending, a key driver of growth, given stubbornly high inflation and jitters about outlook.

In Asian trading, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 added 0.3% to 38,256.17.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 0.3% to 23,718.29. Tech shares that had gained earlier in the week were among the heavier sellers. The Shanghai Composite index reversed early losses, closing 0.2% higher at 3,388.06.

In Australia, the S&P/ASX 500 climbed 0.3% to 8,268.20, while the Kospi in South Korea dropped 0.7% to 2,621.75.

Elsewhere in Asia, Taiwan's dropped 1.5% and the SET in Thailand sank 1.3%.

On Wednesday, U.S. stock indexes drifted to a mixed finish. The S&P 500 inched up by 0.1%, breaking a four-day losing streak that had knocked it off its all-time high. The Dow industrials fell 0.4% and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.3%.

The stock market has generally been struggling following some weaker-than-expected reports on the economy, including a couple that showed U.S. households growing pessimistic about inflation and higher tariffs pushed by President Donald Trump. Some of the harshest drops hit Big Tech and other high-growth stocks, whose incredible momentum had earlier seemed unstoppable.

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A person looks at an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Super Micro Computer, one of the stocks that has soared in the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology, lost nearly a quarter of its value over four days, for example. But it jumped 12.2% Wednesday after filing its annual report for its fiscal year that ended in June.

Much of the market’s attention remained on Nvidia, the chip company that’s become the poster child of the AI rush. It rose 3.7% ahead of its latest profit report, which arrived after trading ended for the day.

The company reported a surge in fourth-quarter profit and sales as demand for its specialized Blackwell chips, which power artificial intelligence systems, continued to grow.

It was the first earnings report for the company and its CEO, Jensen Huang, since a Chinese upstart, DeepSeek, upended the AI industry by saying it developed a large language model that can compete with big U.S. rivals without having to use the most expensive chips. That called into question all the spending Wall Street assumed would go into not only Nvidia’s chips but also the ecosystem that’s built around the AI boom, including electricity to power large data centers.

Some Big Tech companies have since said they still plan to invest billions of dollars into AI, an encouraging signal for the industry.

In other dealings early Thursday, U.S. benchmark crude oil rose 35 cents to $68.97 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Brent crude, the international standard, gave up $1.60 to $72.45 per barrel.

The U.S. dollar rose to 149.75 Japanese yen from 149.10 yen. The euro slipped to $1.0477 from $1.0483.

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