Stock market today: Dow climbs, Nasdaq sinks as tech stocks sell off after ‘Magnificent 7’ results

The European Central Bank and the Bank of England voted to keep their target interest rates steady this morning, citing the war in Iran as a key economic stressor.

The ECB voted to keep the interest rates on the deposit facility, main refinancing operations, and the marginal lending facility unchanged at 2%, 2.15%, and 2.40%, respectively.

In a statement published alongside the ECB decision, the Governing Council said the Middle East conflict, which has stymied the global energy system, “led to a sharp increase in energy prices, pushing up inflation and weighing on economic sentiment.”

The Governing Council added, echoing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in his press conference yesterday, “The longer the war continues, and the longer energy prices remain high, the stronger is the likely impact on broader inflation and the economy.”

In the UK, the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee voted to maintain the bank rate at 3.75% as policymakers attempt to steer the economy back toward 2% inflation.

“The impact on the economy and inflation will depend on how much energy prices go up and how long they stay raised,” the Monetary Policy Committee wrote in a statement released alongside the decision.

“Monetary policy cannot affect global energy prices; our job is to make sure that higher inflation does not persist and have long-lasting effects on the economy.”

Initial jobless claims fell to 189,000 in the week ended April 25, according to data released by the Department of Labor on Thursday, coming in below the previous week’s revised tally of 215,000 claims.

Economists had expected initial claims to be significantly higher at 212,000 for the week, according to consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Continuing claims, which track the unemployed population still seeking work, also fell to 1.76 million in the week ended April 18 compared to the previous week’s revised count of roughly 1.81 million continuing claims.

Economists had been looking for an increase in continuing claims, estimating roughly 1.82 million.

Prices rose by 0.7% in March over the previous month, according to Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index data released Friday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The growth was in line with economists’ expectations of 0.7%, according to Bloomberg’s consensus estimates, nearly doubling February’s 0.4% increase.

“Core” PCE, which excludes the more volatile food and energy categories, rose 0.3% on the month. The print is in line with economists’ expectations for the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure and slightly below February’s 0.4% gain.

On an annual basis, the headline and core PCE price indexes rose 3.5% and 3.2%, respectively, in March from the previous year, in line with expectations on both measures.

Meanwhile, personal income rose by 0.6% in March on a monthly basis, coming in sharply above the previous month’s 0.1% decline and doubling economist expectations of 0.3% growth.

Personal spending increased 0.9% from last month, coming in equal to expectations and above the previous month’s revised growth of 0.6%.

Semiconductor stocks rose on Thursday. Qualcomm (QCOM) surged 9% in premarket trading, while peers Broadcom (AVGO), Intel (INTC), and AMD (AMD) climbed higher as well.

Big Tech earnings from companies like Meta Platforms (META) and Microsoft (MSFT) showed hyperscalers plan to grow their capital expenditures on artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Wall Street sees the makers of the central processing units (CPUs) needed for agentic AI, such as Intel and AMD, as beneficiaries of the trade. The cost of memory and data storage has also benefited players like Sandisk (SNDK), Western Digital (WDC), and Seagate (STX), which rallied premarket following Seagate’s strong results.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm’s better-than-expected first quarter results also lifted the broader chip sector. The maker of smartphone processors said it sees the market for Chinese phones bottoming in the current quarter, a positive sign for the company. It also said it expects to ship custom silicon to an unnamed hyperscaler later this year.

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