US stocks flipped between small gains and losses on Wednesday after a three-day skid, as oil prices halted a sharp advance, easing inflation concerns as traders weigh the Federal Reserve’s potential path for interest-rate hikes.
The S&P 500 Index rose less than 0.1% as of 9:52 a.m. in New York, on track to snap three sessions of losses. The Nasdaq 100 Index dipped 0.2%, after suffering its worst day in two weeks on Tuesday.
Among single-stock movers, Dell Technologies Inc. jumped 8.2% after the company boosted its annual sales forecast by $25 billion due to surging demand for servers to run artificial-intelligence tasks. Credo Technology dropped 17%, signaling that the communications equipment company’s second-quarter revenue forecast beat was not good enough to impress investors after the stock’s 44% rally this year.
US stocks have been under pressure as fighting between the US and Iran over control of the Strait of Hormuz intensified after a period of relative calm, triggering a fresh jump in oil prices as fears grow that the war may drag on indefinitely. On Wednesday, US crude prices eased below $90 a barrel while bond yields fell.
As for the stock market itself, the prevailing mood has been relatively calm. The S&P 500 has gone 24 sessions without a drop of at least 1% through Tuesday, a streak of tranquility last seen in mid-May when investors boosted their bets that the US economy and earnings growth would remain robust as data showed inflation ebbing. The index is hovering about 2.1% from its all-time high.
Traders also parsed data showing US companies added jobs at a more moderate pace in August, underscoring a stable labor market. The figures indicate that employers are still hiring, albeit at a slower pace than in the spring. The August increase was the smallest since the start of the year. The report precedes closely-watched jobs data from the Labor Department on Friday.
“The miss in ADP’s numbers highlights downside risk to Friday’s jobs report from the government,” wrote Bill Adams, chief US economist at Fifth Third Commercial Bank. “The ADP data show AI is affecting hiring less than other changes in the economy. Several industries where AI has obvious applications are adding jobs, while industries that seem insulated from it are cutting them.”
The Cboe Volatility Index remained around 16 — a level that doesn’t typically signal market stress.
Energy shares also steadied on Wednesday. Chevron Corp. plans to invest $7 billion over the next five years through its joint venture partnerships to more than double crude production in Venezuela, the largest financial commitment so far in a US government-led push to revive the Latin American country’s oil industry. Chevron shares slipped 0.1% as a spike in crude prices eased after rising on Tuesday.
Elsewhere, GitLab Inc. surged 15% after the software company boosted its revenue guidance for the full year, beating the average analyst estimate. MongoDB dropped 13%, with growth in the software company’s Atlas product seen coming in below elevated expectations.
Among other stock movers, FuelCell Energy Inc. tumbled 9.5% after the power plant builder reported revenue for the third quarter that missed the average analyst estimate. And G-III Apparel fell 3.5% after the clothing company posted disappointing second-quarter sales and provided a third-quarter revenue forecast that also missed expectations.
Traders are looking ahead to Nvidia Corp. rival Broadcom Inc. reporting earnings after the closing bell on Wednesday. In the wake of last week’s blowout earnings from Nvidia, in which the world’s biggest chipmaker projected sales growth of 70% in its next fiscal year and pushed the stock to its best day since April 2025, Broadcom investors are hoping for a reprise when the third-most valuable chipmaker reports its results.
