Stock Market Today: Dow Soars on Tech Rally and Cooling Inflation—Key Moves to Watch

Stock market today: Wall Street opened lower Friday as rising oil prices and surging Treasury yields triggered profit-taking after a week of record highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped about 0.8% to hover just above 50,000, while the S&P 500 fell 1.1% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite tumbled 1.6% in the first half-hour of trade. Key drivers • Energy shock: West Texas Intermediate crude jumped 2.6% to $103.80 a barrel after President Trump said China agreed to ramp up U.S. oil purchases during his Beijing summit, stoking fears of tighter global supply. Higher fuel costs fanned inflation concerns and pressured transportation and consumer discretionary shares. • Bond market rout: The 10-year Treasury yield hit 4.56%, its highest level in a year, amplifying worries that borrowing costs for mortgages and corporate debt will keep climbing. Elevated yields typically sap appetite for growth stocks, a dynamic on full display in today’s tech-led sell-off. • Tech reversal: Semiconductor names that powered recent gains swung sharply lower. Nvidia fell more than 3% ahead of next week’s earnings, while newly public AI-chipmaker Cerebras Systems slid 5%. All but one of the “Magnificent Seven” mega-caps were in the red, trimming the Nasdaq’s seven-week winning streak. • Leadership change at the Fed: Investors are eyeing Kevin Warsh’s swearing-in later today as Federal Reserve Chair. Traders are parsing whether the new chief will maintain the central bank’s gradual rate-cut outlook or adopt a more hawkish stance given sticky core inflation. Sector snapshot Energy was the lone sector in positive territory, buoyed by the crude-price spike. Financials held up relatively well as higher long-term yields promise wider net-interest margins. Conversely, information technology and communication services were the morning’s biggest laggards, with chip equipment, cloud software and electric-vehicle names absorbing the brunt of the retreat. What to watch next • Fed Chair Warsh’s inaugural remarks for clues on the policy path into the June FOMC meeting. • Nvidia’s earnings Wednesday, a potential catalyst for the broader market given its outsized weight in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. • Friday’s University of Michigan consumer-sentiment survey, which could confirm whether gasoline-driven inflation expectations are becoming unanchored. Bottom line After flirting with fresh highs all week, U.S. equities are catching their breath as the stock market today digests a cocktail of rising energy prices, higher yields and policy uncertainty. Whether this pullback deepens or proves a healthy reset will hinge on upcoming Fed signals and the next wave of AI-driven earnings reports.