Finance

Chipmaker stocks experienced deep losses on Thursday, extending a multi-day slide driven by investor anxiety over heavy artificial intelligence infrastructure spending. Even after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing reported stellar quarterly results, its decision to upwardly revise capital expenditures sparked an industry-wide selloff, heavily impacting companies like SanDisk, Western Digital, and Arm Holdings as institutional hedge funds actively lock in profits and trim exposure.

Second-quarter corporate financial results provided solid support to the market, helping to insulate some sectors from technology-driven losses. UnitedHealth Group spearheaded the upbeat reports by reporting quarterly earnings that dramatically outpaced expectations and prompting management to lift its full-year profit forecast, while major financial firms like BlackRock and BNY Mellon also logged strong earnings surprises.

Yields on U.S. government debt moved higher on Thursday as investors adjusted to elevated oil prices and escalating geopolitical friction between the United States and Iran. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield rose to approximately 4.57%, tracking an increase in energy-driven inflation fears that eclipsed earlier relief from cool producer and consumer price inflation metrics.