NEW YORK — U.S. stocks fell across the board, weighed down by spreading calls to slow the pace of artificial intelligence development and by rising oil prices.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 52,421.20 on the 14th, down 152.09 points, or 0.29%, from the previous session. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 37.00 points, or 0.48%, to 7,619.98, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 146.62 points, or 0.56%, to 26,186.41.
Among the largest companies by market capitalization, Nvidia fell 3.36%, Amazon 1.26%, SpaceX 2.02%, Broadcom 4.77%, Tesla 1.77%, SK hynix 7.60%, Micron 5.25% and SanDisk 4.98%. Apple rose 0.24%, Microsoft 1.97%, Google parent Alphabet 3.22% and Facebook parent Meta 2.71%, holding up in a declining market.
Investor sentiment soured, particularly around semiconductor shares, as calls to slow AI development gained ground within the AI model industry. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index plunged 5.86% on the day. The trigger came on the 12th, when Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei wrote on his blog that the pace of improvement in AI model capabilities should be slowed. The argument was that AI will inevitably drift further beyond human control as it repeats self-learning. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman each responded on X, formerly Twitter, in an unusual show of agreement, saying Amodei was right. In an interview with Fortune on the 12th, Altman said further research on AI safety was needed and that OpenAI would not proceed with an initial public offering this year.
Oil prices rose after a crude shipping route in Saudi Arabia was shut down. Brent crude futures for November delivery closed at $105.68 a barrel on the ICE Futures Exchange in London, up 1.02% from the previous session. West Texas Intermediate futures for October delivery ended at $101.39 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up 1.34%.
Prices were driven largely by Saudi Arabia's closure of the East-West Pipeline, which bypasses the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia has been exporting crude through the Red Sea since the strait was blockaded after the war with Iran, and the East-West Pipeline is the core facility in that strategy. Operations were suspended after a drone attack on the 11th. The Associated Press reported that the pipeline is expected to be fully or partially out of service for the several weeks that repair work is underway.
Brent and WTI, which had surged nearly 5% intraday on supply concerns, gave up those gains after a remark by U.S. President Donald Trump. On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump said that Iran wants a deal quickly and desperately.
As inflation concerns spread, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note, the global benchmark for interest rates, pushed past 5%, a level seen as a psychological resistance line. After climbing as high as 5.014% intraday, the 10-year yield finished at 4.996%. It was the first time the 10-year yield had topped 5% intraday since October 2023, and only the second time since 2007, just before the global financial crisis. Bloomberg reported that the 10-year yield also exceeded 5% on only a single day in 2023. The two-year yield, which is sensitive to monetary policy, rose to 4.666%, while the 30-year yield, a reference for mortgage rates, climbed to 5.354%.
According to the CME FedWatch tool, the federal funds futures market raised the probability that the Federal Reserve will raise its benchmark rate by 0.25 percentage point at its Federal Open Market Committee meeting on the 15th and 16th to 94.5%, from 87.3% a day earlier.
