Wall Street’s split widened Thursday, as smaller stocks and other formerly downtrodden areas of the market rose while superstar Big Tech stocks gave back more of their stellar gains. A swirling day of trading left the Standard & Poor's 500 with a loss of 0.5% after its slide from the day before, which was its worst since 2022 and led to a wipeout for financial markets around the world. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 81 points, or 0.2%, while the Nasdaq composite sank 0.9%.
Rate cuts would release pressure that has built up on both the economy and financial markets, and investors are thinking they could offer a particularly big boost to smaller stocks and other downtrodden areas whose profits are more closely tied to the strength of the economy than Big Tech's. The Russell 2000 index of smaller stocks jumped 1.3%, doing better than other market indexes. It’s up 8.6% this month, versus a loss of 1.1% for the big stocks in the S&P 500.