Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq slide amid upbeat bank earnings, Iran fears

Stocks fell at the market open on Wednesday as investors overlooked upbeat bank earnings and absorbed fresh inflation data while eyeing a potential Supreme Court ruling on tariffs as well as signs of potential US military action on Iran.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) slid 0.8%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) fell nearly 0.6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) moved down around 0.2%, as a pullback in financial stocks dragged Wall Street indexes off record highs.

Nvidia (NVDA) shares moved fractionally lower in premarket trade Wednesday as Reuters reported that Chinese customs authorities are not allowing the entrance of the tech giant’s H200 AI chips into the country.

Simmering — at some points boiling — geopolitical tensions between the US and China have disrupted Nvidia’s sales to what was once, in the not-so-distant past, the chipmaker’s second-most important market.

While initial disruption came from the US government as Trump restricted Nvidia’s lowest-end AI chip sales to the country during the launch of his administration’s trade war in April 2025, the president reversed his stance after intense lobbying by CEO Jensen Huang. But Trump’s request for a kickback from Nvidia’s China sales turned off officials in Beijing, who began clamping down on imports.

Trump relaxed his posture further in the last two months, saying he would allow Nvidia to export higher-power H200 chips to China in exchange for a cut of those sales. The US formally approved H200 exports to the country with some conditions on Tuesday.

But China’s restrictions complicate Nvidia’s path into what CEO Huang has said is a $50 billion AI market.

“Officials are prioritizing domestic chip development, even though Chinese processors still lag in training large scale AI models, making the H200 hard to replace,” wrote Hedgeye Risk Management analysts in a note to clients Wednesday.

The Producer Price Index (PPI) for November, released Wednesday after a delay due to the US government shutdown last fall, showed prices for final goods and services purchased by businesses rose 0.2% during the month after edging up 0.1% in October. The uptick was as projected by economists tracked by Bloomberg.

The change was driven by a 0.9% increase in prices for final goods, or finished products — marking the largest jump since February 2024, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The increase was fueled by prices for gasoline, which soared 10.5% during the month. Excluding food and energy, the prices of goods rose just 0.2%.

Year-over-year, the PPI showed wholesale inflation coming in at 3%, more than the 2.7% expected by economists. Excluding food, energy and trade services, prices for final demand goods and services rose 3.5% — the biggest climb since March 2025 and more than the 2.9% projected.

A delayed release from the US Census Bureau on Wednesday showed retail and food services sales totaled $735.9 billion in November, up 3.3% from the year-ago period and 0.6% from the previous month. The month-over-month change was greater than the 0.5% uptick projected by economists tracked by Bloomberg.

The gain was driven by a resurgence in auto sales in November.

Meanwhile, total sales from September through November were also 3.6% higher than the previous year.

OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) has been leading the AI race for some time and was hoping to announce a deal with Apple (AAPL) last year, but the launch of Alphabet’s (GOOG, GOOGL) Gemini 3 and a new deal with the iPhone maker may have changed things.

Yahoo Finance’s Laura Bratton looks at how Google’s new deal with Apple may be a big loss for OpenAI.

Read more here.

Infosys (INFY) stock climbed higher by 2% before the bell on Wednesday after reporting better-than-expected third-quarter revenue, helped by a pickup in tech demand from ​its financial services clients.

Reuters reports:

Read more here.

Intel (INTC) stock rose 3% before the bell on Wednesday following its upgrade from Keybanc analysts on Tuesday.

Rivian (RIVN) shares fell 3% during premarket trading on Wednesday. The US automaker was downgraded by analysts at UBS to Sell from Neutral. UBS raised its price target for the electric vehicle company to $15 from $13.

Cybersecurity firms Palo Alto (PANW) and Fortinet Inc. (FTNT) both edged lower by 3% before the bell following a report in Reuters that Chinese authorities have told domestic companies to stop using cybersecurity software made by around a ​dozen firms from the US and Israel due to national security concerns.