Wall Street ends choppy session lower as tech shares drop

By Caroline Valetkevitch and Niket Nishant

July 1 (Reuters) - ‌U.S. stocks finished slightly ​lower on ​Wednesday as technology shares fell, but gains in Meta Platforms limited the decline in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.

Chipmakers were among the biggest drags on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, with an index of ‌semiconductors ending 6.3% lower and technology leading declines among S&P 500 sectors. Lofty valuations and big ⁠AI spending by tech companies have been a concern for some market participants.

Investors also remain cautious about talks between the U.S. and Iran, especially with ‌a long U.S. holiday weekend coming up, ‌Tim Ghriskey, senior portfolio strategist at Ingalls & Snyder in New York, said.

Iran and the United States concluded a round of indirect talks on Wednesday with no sign they had made headway toward a lasting peace. The U.S. and Iran ​signed an interim accord last month.

The key monthly U.S. jobs report is due out on Thursday, with the market closed on Friday ahead of the Fourth of July holiday.

Shares of Meta Platforms rallied 8.8% after Bloomberg News reported that ⁠it is building a cloud business to sell excess AI computing capacity.

Also providing some support were comments from Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh that inflation risks had ​eased recently.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 13.96 points, or 0.03%, to 52,305.24, the S&P 500 lost 16.13 points, or 0.22%, to 7,483.23 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 173.69 points, or ​0.66%, to 26,040.03.

Warsh said he will stick firmly to the U.S. central ‌bank's 2% inflation target and "disappoint" anyone who expects loose monetary policy despite President Donald Trump's call for interest rate cuts.

Oil prices rose sharply at the start of the Iran war. Traders slightly ⁠pared their rate-hike expectations as Warsh spoke, but they still expect at least one hike from the U.S. central bank this year, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Investors also digested data from the Institute for Supply Management that showed U.S. manufacturing activity had slowed in June ⁠but was still solid.

Among the day's other decliners, shares of Alcoa fell 8.9% after Australia's South32 agreed to sell most of its aluminium ​assets to Alcoa.

The day's weakness comes after a strong second quarter for the indexes. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite registered their biggest quarterly gains since 2020, while the Dow marked its best showing since 2022.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 19.71 billion shares, compared with the ‌23.36 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.07-to-1 ratio on the New York Stock Exchange. There were 353 new ‌highs and 127 new lows on the NYSE.

On the Nasdaq, 2,661 stocks rose and 2,303 fell as advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a ⁠1.16-to-1 ratio. The S&P 500 posted no new 52-week ‌highs and no new lows, while ​the Nasdaq Composite recorded no new highs and no new lows.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch in New York and Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Avinash P in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai ‌and Matthew Lewis)

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