The Dow hit an intraday record high, but technology stocks weighed on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq on Monday as investors continued to gauge the likelihood of an upsized rate cut from the Federal Reserve this week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 228.30 points, or 0.6%, to close at a record of 41,622.08, eclipsing its previous closing high of 41,563.08 on Aug. 30. The blue-chip index had soared more than 300 points to set an intraday record of 41,733.97.
The S&P 500 edged up 0.1%, and the Nasdaq dropped more than 90 points, or 0.5%.
Apple dropped nearly 3% as the biggest weight to both the benchmark S&P index and Nasdaq Composite, after an analyst at TF International Securities said demand for its latest iPhone 16 models was lower than expected.
The demand concerns also weighed on chipmakers, with Nvidia, the best performer on the S&P 500 this year, down almost 2%, Broadcom falling 2.2% and Micron Tech down 4.4% to push the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index lower by 1.4%.
“If people want to raise a lot of money quickly, how do they do it? They go sell the names that they can sell really quickly without necessarily destroying it. So you can sell Apple, you can sell Nvidia, you can sell Amazon, you can sell Microsoft very quickly and raise a lot of cash,” said Ken Polcari, chief market strategist at SlateStone Wealth in Jupiter, Florida.
“They want to do it in front of the Fed in case they’re getting nervous or they want to raise cash to just have cash available to put to work.”
Markets have rallied since the start of this year on expectations the Fed would begin loosening its monetary policy, while data has suggested the economy would avoid entering a recession.
Market expectations on the size of the rate cut the Federal Reserve will announce on Wednesday have varied widely in recent days and are currently pricing in a 59% chance for a 50-basis-point cut, according to CME’s FedWatch Tool.
Intel jumped 6.4% after a report showed it qualified for as much as $3.5 billion in federal grants to make semiconductors for the Department of Defense.
Boeing lost 0.8% after the planemaker said it was freezing hiring and weighing temporary furloughs in the coming weeks as its workers’ strike stretched to its fourth day.
