AI darlings prop up Wall Street as most other stocks fall

NEW YORK (AP) - More gains for Nvidia, Amazon and other AI superstars propped up Wall Street on Monday.

The S&P 500 rose 0.2% and pulled closer to its all-time high set last week, even though the majority of stocks in the index sank. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 226 points, or 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.5%.

Nvidia was the strongest force lifting the S&P 500, just like it has been for the year so far. The chip company rose 2.2% to bring its gain for the year to date to 54.1%.

Amazon was the No. 2 force pushing the market higher. It rallied 4% after announcing a $38 billion agreement with OpenAI, which will use Amazon's cloud computing services to run its AI workloads.

IREN, an AI cloud service provider, jumped 11.5% after Microsoft announced a $9.7 billion contract with it that will give the tech giant access to some of Nvidia's chips.

Palantir Technologies, which came into the day with a stunning 165% gain for the year so far, rose another 3.3%. Traders pushed the AI darling higher in the final hours before the data platform company reported its latest quarterly results after trading closed for the day.

Companies across the U.S. stock market will need to hit expectations for growth in profit to justify the big gains for their stock prices since April. Criticism has been rising that the broad U.S. market, and AI stocks in particular, have become too expensive and could be inflating into a dangerous bubble similar to the 2000 dot-com bust.

For the most part, companies have been meeting the high expectations for profits. Four out of every five companies in the S&P 500 have topped analysts' forecasts so far this reporting season, according to FactSet. With roughly two-thirds of all S&P 500 reports in, companies in the index are on track to deliver healthy growth of nearly 11% versus a year earlier.

On the losing end of Wall Street Monday was Kimberly-Clark, which dropped 14.6% after it said it would buy Kenvue in a deal valuing it at $48.7 billion. Kenvue, which sells Tylenol, Band-Aids and Listerine, jumped 12.3%.

Beyond Meat tumbled 16% after the plant-based meat company delayed its report for the latest quarter's results to Nov. 11 from Tuesday. It said it needs more time to assess how big of a non-cash charge it will take due to issues it had previously disclosed with some of its assets.

Beyond Meat's stock has been mostly falling since topping $4 in July, but it went on a wild ride last month where it suddenly soared from 52 cents to $3.62 in three days, a nearly 600% surge. It got swept up in the "meme stock" craze, where prices can rise solely due to online hype rather than any change to the company's actual business.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 11.77 points to 6,851.97. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 226.19 to 47,336.68, and the Nasdaq composite rose 109.77 to 23,834.72.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.10% from 4.11% late Friday.

A discouraging report on U.S. manufacturing said that activity shrank by more last month than economists expected. Several manufacturers told surveyors for the Institute for Supply Management that President Donald Trump's tariffs are creating financial pain.

"Wonder has turned to concern regarding how the tariff threats are affecting our business," a chemical products manufacturer told the survey. "Orders are down across most divisions, and we've lowered our financial expectations for 2025."

"In general, business is really strained," another manufacturer told the survey.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe following a stronger finish in Asia.

South Korea's Kospi jumped 2.8% to another record. SK Hynix soared nearly 11%, helped by recent moves to team up with Nvidia in developing the country's artificial intelligence infrastructure and capabilities.

South Korean shipbuilders also rose after China said it would cancel added port fees on U.S.-invested or U.S. flagged vessels after Trump met last week with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.