S&P 500 rises 0.4% as Nasdaq gains and chip stocks advance in election session
Key Facts
The S&P 500 closed up 0.4% in Tuesday’s November 3 session, the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.8%, while the Dow Jones fell 0.4%, according to the Associated Press. The mixed performance came as technology and chip stocks advanced, even though most S&P 500 constituents ended the session lower. The picture was different in Reuters’ reading at 11:50 a.m. Eastern time, when the two indexes were up 0.40% and 0.79%, respectively, while the Dow Jones was down 0.45%. At that reading, the S&P 500 stood at 7,571.81 points, the Nasdaq at 25,361.31 points and the Dow at 51,751.68 points. Trading coincided with the U.S. midterm elections, while technology companies’ results remained a near-term focus for investors.
Nvidia was the biggest boost to the benchmark, with its shares up 2.3% at the close, according to the Associated Press. Broadcom shares rose 3.1%, making the company the next-largest contributor to the S&P 500. Microsoft, Amazon and Meta shares also gained more than 2% each, indicating that gains extended to large technology companies as well as chipmakers. Reuters said the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 3% during the session. AMD shares advanced 5.1% ahead of its quarterly results, due after the market close, putting the company’s report among the events investors awaited after the election session.
Technology stocks’ advance remained volatile amid the artificial intelligence investment wave, as investors worried about elevated valuations. The Associated Press reported that technology and AI stocks swung from morning gains to afternoon losses in the previous session. Reuters noted that the Nasdaq-100 closed on Monday, November 2, more than 10% below its record closing high, confirming that it had entered a correction. The report linked this to investors’ concerns about the scale of major technology companies’ AI spending. October’s results also showed divergence among indexes: the S&P 500 fell slightly less than 1%, compared with declines of more than 6.7% for the Nasdaq-100 and more than 15% for the semiconductor index.
Apple shares did not join gains among major technology stocks, falling 1.9% despite the company reporting quarterly profit and revenue above analysts’ expectations, according to the Associated Press. The company said it expected to earn less than one dollar of profit for every dollar of revenue during the final three months of the year. It also pointed to rising memory-chip costs, linked to demand from AI data centers. Those costs are putting pressure on what the company earns from its revenue in the coming period, even as its latest-quarter results exceeded analysts’ expectations. Meanwhile, chipmakers’ gains in the session were part of a broader market advance, but did not prevent Apple or most benchmark stocks from falling.
Other indicators moved in mixed directions during the session: the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes rose to 4.96% from 4.91% late Monday, according to the Associated Press. The agency linked the yield’s rise to an upbeat report on the labor market. In energy markets, Brent crude fell 1.1% to settle at $103.60 a barrel, after fluctuating overnight and in the morning amid uncertainty over the war with Iran. On the economic data front, new orders at manufacturers totaled $677.2 billion in September, up 1.8% from August, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The bureau set December 3, 2026, as the release date for the next orders data.
The election remained a factor in investors’ calculations amid debate over what its results could mean for fiscal policy, regulation, taxes and government spending. Reuters quoted an investment official as saying that the results coming in would be "a good thing so we can get past this," referring to the removal of an event that had been on the market’s radar. The Associated Press provided historical context, citing an analyst at Edward Jones who said the S&P 500 had posted a positive return in the six months following every midterm election since 1970. This came as technology stocks remained sensitive to concerns over valuations and AI spending. AMD’s quarterly results, scheduled for after the market close on election day, were among the notable near-term events flagged by the Reuters report.