US STOCKS-S & P 500, Nasdaq Fall As Earnings Season Gathers Speed;
FMC plunges 33% on lower quarterly revenue projection
Uber decreases after assisting Q1 reservations listed below quotes
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Indexes: Dow up 0.15%, S&P 500 down 0.08%, Nasdaq down 0.34%
(Updates with afternoon rates)
By Shashwat Chauhan and Sukriti Gupta
Feb 5 (Reuters) -
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq slipped on Wednesday, with Alphabet the most significant drag after the tech giant's ugly cloud income and significant investments into expert system disappointed financiers, while a variety of earnings contributed to the volatility.
Google-parent Alphabet dropped 8.2% after publishing downbeat cloud profits growth and earmarking a higher-than-expected $75 billion for its AI buildout this year.
"The market has some proof to recommend that there are other business that potentially doing it cheaper, better, faster, quicker," said Dave Grecsek, managing director in planning technique and allmy.bio research at Aspiriant.
"So what is the wisdom of continuing to maintain high capex?"
AI-related stocks were rocked last week following the soaring appeal of a low-cost Chinese synthetic intelligence model developed by start-up
DeepSeek
. Nvidia, among the companies that was the worst hit, was up 3.8% on the day.
Advanced Micro Devices, meanwhile, lost 8.9% after CEO Lisa Su said the company's current-quarter information center sales - a proxy for its AI profits - would fall about 7% from the previous quarter.
On the data front, wiki.rolandradio.net U.S. services sector activity all of a sudden slowed in January in the middle of cooling need, helping curb cost development, a reading from the Institute for Supply Management showed.
Private payrolls rose by 183,000 jobs last month, compared with an approximated 150,000 increase, per economists surveyed by Reuters. The critical January nonfarm payrolls report is anticipated to be released on Friday.
Shares of Apple relieved 1.2% as Bloomberg News reported that China's antitrust regulator was preparing for a possible investigation of the iPhone maker.
At 11:33 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 65.83 points, or 0.15%, to 44,621.87, the S&P 500 lost 4.37 points, or 0.08%, to 6,033.51 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 70.17 points, or 0.34%, to 19,586.61.
Eight of the 11 S&P 500 sectors traded higher, though interaction services' over 3% fall obscured gains.
Uber Technologies dropped 7.2% after the ride-hailing company forecast current-quarter reservations listed below estimates.
Fiserv advanced 7.1% as the payments firm beat estimates for fourth-quarter earnings, helped by strong need in its banking and payments processing unit.
Markets also looked for advancements on the tariffs front after U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he remained in no rush to speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping to try to pacify a brand-new trade war in between the nations.
Richmond Fed president Thomas Barkin said the Fed was still towards more rate cuts this year, but flagged uncertainty around the effect of new tariffs, immigration, regulations and other Trump administration efforts.
Among leading movers, FMC Corp plunged 33.6% after the agrichemicals producer projection first-quarter profits below quotes.
Johnson Controls leapt 11.1% as the building services business named Joakim Weidemanis as chief executive officer and raised its 2025 profit projection.
Advancing issues surpassed decliners by a 2.03-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 1.6-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted 27 new 52-week highs and 12 brand-new lows, while the Nasdaq Composite tape-recorded 81 brand-new highs and opensourcebridge.science 69 brand-new lows.
(Reporting by Shashwat Chauhan and Sukriti Gupta in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai, Devika Syamnath and Maju Samuel)