LIVE MARKETS-Wall Street mixed as chip rout extends

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WALL STREET MIXED AS CHIP ROUT EXTENDS

Wall Street moseyed to the end of an eventful week with a muted beginning to Friday's session, as investors digest a swath of hot inflation data and a mixed opening week of third-quarter earnings season.

The three major US stock indexes are mixed, with weakness in chip stocks .SOX once again weighing on the Nasdaq .IXIC. The Dow .DJI is advancing while the S&P 500 .SPX is staking out a middle ground near the zero line.

For the week, it's a similar picture; the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 are headed for weekly losses, while the Dow is poised to close above last Friday's level.

Microchips, the erstwhile superhero of the year so far, are on track for their eighth consecutive decline. The index is currently showing a weekly loss of 9.7%. The AI trade, which has provided so much upside muscle to the stock market in recent years, is losing some luster as investors worry about the massive debt incurred to fund data center construction and industry insiders sound warning alarms over potential dangers posed by the nascent technology.

On the sector level, banks .SPXBK, homebuilders .SPCOMHOME and aerospace/defense stocks .SPCOMAED are the clear outperformers, with tech .SPLRCT and megacap momentum stocks .NYFANG joining the SOX at the bottom of the heap.

Third-quarter reporting season is well underway, with 45 of the companies in the S&P 500 having reported. Of those, 84% have beaten street estimates.

Analysts currently expect aggregate third-quarter S&P 500 earnings growth of 30.7% year-on-year, with energy and tech firms seen posting annual increases of 128.3% and 66.5%, respectively, according to LSEG data.

The Labor Department released its third inflation indicator of the week in the form of its import/export prices report. As with its CPI and PPI numbers, released on Wednesday and Thursday, the report showed energy price pressures are bleeding into core inflation data.

Fed chair Kevin Warsh expressed optimism in US economic resilience, and surprise that the global economy has weathered the energy price shocks arising from the Middle East conflict, and said that inflation remains a "common challenge." But in contrast to his Fed colleagues, he declined to provide any clues regarding the Fed's path forward with respect to potential monetary tightening.

Here's where things stood at 9:55 a.m. ET:

(Stephen Culp)

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