S&P 500 near flat, Meta shares jump

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By Caroline Valetkevitch and Niket Nishant

July 1 (Reuters) – The S&P 500 was little changed in afternoon trading on Wednesday, but sharply higher shares of Meta Platforms provided some support along with comments from Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh that inflation risks had eased recently.

Warsh also 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.

Shares of Meta Platforms were up more than 10% after Bloomberg News reported that it is building a cloud business to sell excess AI computing capacity.

“This does seem to be something that is likely to continue to help the stock,” said Tim Ghriskey, senior portfolio strategist at Ingalls & Snyder in New York. “It has underperformed the Mag 7 group” of other megacap stocks.

The Dow was up slightly, while the Nasdaq was down, and an index of semiconductors was off 5.9%.

Investors are keeping a close eye on talks between the U.S. and Iran and remain cautious, Ghriskey said.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 97.54 points, or 0.19%, to 52,414.46, the S&P 500 gained 4.56 points, or 0.05%, to 7,503.92 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 57.46 points, or 0.22%, to 26,156.26.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance said discussions between the U.S. and Iran were going well as they held indirect technical talks in Qatar about the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, adding Washington would not return to full combat unless necessary. The U.S. and Iran signed an interim accord last month.

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

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

In the second quarter of 2026, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite registered their best quarterly performance since 2020, while the Dow marked its best showing since 2022.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.33-to-1 ratio on the New York Stock Exchange. There were 295 new highs and 102 new lows on the NYSE. On the Nasdaq, 2,788 stocks rose and 1,961 fell as advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.42-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 Lewi