The lone remaining member, Nvidia, will report its results later this earnings season, and its 4.8 per cent drop was Thursday’s heaviest weight on the market after Microsoft. Expectations are just as high for the chip company after its stock soared over 880 per cent in the last two years.

The tumble for Big Tech on the last day of October wiped out the S&P 500’s gain for the month. The index fell 1 per cent for its first down month in the last six, even though it set an all-time high during the middle of it.

Such a big move might have been overdue following an unusually long and placid run, according to Jonathan Krinsky at BTIG. He pointed to how the S&P 500 had failed to move by 1 per cent in a day in either direction, without accounting for rounding, for the longest stretch in nearly three years.

Still, Thursday wasn’t a complete washout thanks in part to cruise ships and cigarettes.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holding steamed 6.3 per cent higher after delivering stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The cruise ship operator said it was seeing strong demand from customers across its brands and itineraries, and it raised its profit forecast for the full year of 2024.

Altria Group rose 7.8 per cent for another one of the S&P 500’s bigger gains after beating analysts’ profit expectations. Chief Executive Billy Gifford credited resilience for its Marlboro brand, among other things, and announced a cost-cutting initiative.

Oil-and-gas companies also rose after the price of a barrel of US crude gained 0.9 per cent to recoup some of its losses for the week and for the year so far. ConocoPhillips jumped 6.4 per cent.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 108.22 points to 5,705.45. The Dow dropped 378.08 to 41,736.46, and the Nasdaq composite tumbled 512.78 to 18,095.15.

In the bond market, Treasury yields edged lower following a mixed set of reports on the US economy.

One report said a measure of inflation that the Federal Reserve likes to use slowed to 2.1 per cent in September from 2.3 per cent. That’s almost all the way back to the Fed’s 2 per cent target, though underlying trends after ignoring food and energy costs were a touch hotter than economists expected.

A separate report said growth in workers’ wages and benefits slowed during the summer. That could put less pressure on upcoming inflation. A third report, meanwhile, said fewer US workers applied for unemployment benefits last week. That’s an indication that the number of layoffs remains relatively low across the country.

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Treasury yields swivelled up and down several times following the reports before moving lower. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.27 per cent from 4.30 per cent late Wednesday. That’s still up sharply from the roughly 3.60 per cent level it was at in the middle of last month.

Yields have been rising following a string of stronger-than-expected reports on the US economy. Such data bolster hopes that the economy can avoid a recession, particularly now that the Fed is cutting interest rates to support the job market instead of keeping them high to quash high inflation. But the surprising resilience is also forcing traders to downgrade their expectations for how deeply the Fed will ultimately cut rates.

In stock markets abroad, indexes sank across much of Europe and Asia.

South Korea’s Kospi dropped 1.5 per cent for one of the larger losses after North Korea test launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile designed to be able to hit the US mainland in a move that was likely meant to grab America’s attention ahead of Election Day.

AP

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