NEW YORK — The U.S. stock market is drifting around its record heights Thursday following mixed profit reports from Microsoft and some other of Wall Street’s most influential companies. The action was strongest again in the gold market, where the metal’s price keeps ripping higher in its astounding run.
The S&P 500 edged up by less than 0.1% and was flirting with its all-time high set earlier this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 162 points, or 0.3%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.6% lower.
Microsoft sank 10.4% even though the tech giant reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Investors honed in instead on how much Microsoft is spending on investments, whether growth in its Azure cloud business will slow and how long its push into artificial-intelligence will take to turn into big profits.
Helping to offset that was Meta Platforms, which rallied 8.6% after topping profit expectations, even though it also said it will continue its massive investments in AI.
Companies across the market are under pressure to deliver solid growth in profits following record-setting runs for their stock prices. Stock prices tend to follow the path of corporate profits over the long term, and earnings need to rise to quiet criticism that stock prices have grown too expensive.
Tesla 's profit report got a mixed reaction from investors. It swung from an initial gain to a dip of 0.7% after delivering a bigger profit than analysts expected, one that was sharply lower than from a year earlier. Tesla's leader, Elon Musk, has been urging investors to focus less on its flagging car sales and more on the company's robotaxis and robots.
IBM was a winner and rallied 7.1% after surpassing analysts' expectations for profit and revenue. Southwest Airlines flew 9.7% higher even though its profit fell short of forecasts. It gave a forecast for earnings in 2026 that blew past analysts' expectations, saying it's seeing strong momentum after making big changes to its business like charging baggage fees and having assigned seating.
On the losing end of Wall Street was ServiceNow, which dropped 9.2% even though it reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than expected. Analysts praised the performance, but it wasn’t enough to stop a slide for the stock that’s been underway since the summer.
Some of the wildest action in financial markets was again for precious metals, as gold’s price rallied another 4.5% to $5,579.00 per ounce. It was only on Monday that it topped $5,000 for the first time. Gold’s price is up more than 25% for the young year so far and has roughly doubled over the last 12 months.
Its price has surged as investors look for safer things to own while weighing a wide range risks, including a U.S. stock market that critics call expensive, political instability, threats of tariffs and heavy debt loads for governments worldwide.
The U.S. dollar has seen its value sink over the last year because of many of those same risks, and it slipped a bit more Thursday against the euro, British pound, Japanese yen, Swiss franc and other competitors.
U.S. Treasury yields held a bit firmer in the bond market, though. The yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.26%, where it was late Wednesday.
The Federal Reserve decided Wednesday to at least pause cuts to its main interest rate. That was after the Fed cut rates three times in a row to close out 2025 in an attempt to shore up the job market.
Helping to keep the Fed on pause is the fact that inflation remains stubbornly above the central bank’s 2% target. Lower rates can worsen inflation.
They could also further undercut the U.S. dollar’s value, which would help U.S. exporters. Trump has been pushing aggressively for lower rates.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.
South Korea’s Kospi climbed 1% for one of the world’s bigger moves, lifted to another record in part by chipmaker SK Hynix.
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AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.
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