Stock market news today: S&P 500, Nasdaq slide as China curb risk rattles techs

US stocks were mixed as techs came under dual pressure from worries about US export curbs on China and Donald Trump's stance on Taiwan.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) rose about 0.4%. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) fell more than 1%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) dropped more than 2.3%.

Stocks are pulling back as concerns about risks to tech names eclipse the high hopes for interest-rate cuts that have fueled the rally in recent days. Those worries weighed on heavyweights whose AI-fueled gains have helped propel the S&P 500 to fresh record highs this year, with chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) down about nearly 4% in early trading.

The Biden administration has told allies it's looking at imposing tougher restrictions on companies still making advanced chip technology available to China despite existing export curbs, Bloomberg reported. Shares of ASML (ASML, ASML.AS), cited as a potential target, dropped over 8% after the Dutch chip gear maker posted solid quarterly earnings.

Meanwhile, the Republican nominee Trump questioned US defense support for Taiwan in a Bloomberg interview, suggesting the island claimed by China should pay for US protection. Chipmaker TSMC's (TSM, 2330.TW) shares fell more than 6%, having erased close to $30 billion in market value in Taiwan as stocks there slipped.

Live4 updates

• Investors are growing increasingly confident about a 'soft landing' Investors are increasingly confident that the global economy is headed for a so-called soft landing, where inflation falls toward the Federal Reserve's target without high interest rates sending the economy into a tailspin. In Bank of America's July Global Fund Manager Survey, released on Wednesday, 68% of respondents said a soft landing is the most likely outcome for the global economy in the next 12 months. This marked the highest percentage of respondents siding with such an outcome since January 2024. It tied for the second-highest reading in the past year. The call for a soft landing is in line with how fund managers are currently evaluating the balance of risks to markets. For the first time in six months, inflation wasn't the No. 1 risk listed by respondents. (Geopolitical conflict took the top spot this time.) Read more here.

• Home construction picks up in June — but it's 'not as good as it seems' New residential construction picked up in June as builders focused on scaling up multifamily projects. Housing starts rose 3% to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 1.35 million units, according to data from the Census Bureau released Wednesday. Multi-family construction contributed to the gain last month. New construction of five or more units climbed to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 360,000, up from 295,000 the month prior. “The rise in housing starts and building permits in June is not as good as it seems at first glance, as it was driven by gains in the volatile multi-family sector, which we think will prove temporary,” Thomas Ryan, an economist at Capital Economics, wrote after the release. Single-family starts and permits, though, falling 2.2% and 2.3% month over month, respectively. It was the fifth consecutive monthly drop in single-family permits, signaling further weakness ahead. The drop reflects the “argument that homebuilders are hesitant to start new projects given the large build up of new homes for sale, which represents 9.3 months of supply at the current sales rate — the highest since November 2022,” Ryan added. Homebuilder stocks lost steam Wednesday on the heels of the fresh government data. The SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (XHB) fell 0.66%. D.R. Horton, Inc. (DHI), the biggest US homebuilder, slipped 0.6%, while Lennar (LEN) and Toll Brothers (TOL) dropped 0.6% and 0.5%, respectively, during morning trading.

• Stocks slide at the open led by chips US stocks pulled back from record highs on Wednesday, as techs came under dual pressure from worries about US export curbs on China and Donald Trump's stance on Taiwan. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) fell about 0.1%, The S&P 500 (^GSPC) fell nearly 1%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) dropped more than 1.6%. The Biden administration has told allies it's looking at imposing tougher restrictions on companies still making advanced chip technology available to China despite existing export curbs, Bloomberg reported. This led chipmakers with ASML (ASML) falling more than 8% and Nvidia (NVDA) sliding nearly 4%.

• BofA fund manager survey takes the pulse of an election sweep... The BofA monthly fund manager survey is out, and it's the latest piece of Wall Street insight putting forward the potential for an election sweep in November. Some of the key findings on this front:

• 77% think a sweep would lead to higher bond yields.

• 52% think a sweep would lead to a higher US dollar.

• 48% think a sweep would be positive for US stocks.