NextFin News - U.S. stocks fell for a fourth consecutive session Thursday as crude oil settled above $100 a barrel for the first time since May, intensifying fears that a prolonged Iran conflict is now feeding directly into producer prices and corporate margins. The session's central tension pitted a resilient labor and earnings backdrop against an energy shock that shows no sign of abating seven months into the U.S.-Iran war, with a hotter-than-expected August producer price report reinforcing the case that inflation risk is shifting from a bond-market story to a real-economy one. Consumer defensive and select healthcare names offered pockets of strength, but broad participation in the selloff — roughly 60% of S&P 500 constituents finished lower — left little doubt about the session's overall tone, and two of software's most closely watched AI bellwethers, Oracle and Adobe, reported earnings after the close.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.60%
The S&P 500 Index fell 0.58%
The Nasdaq Composite declined 0.65%
Stock & Sector Performance
Materials and industrials were among the session's weakest corners as commodity-linked names gave back recent gains. Cooper Cos. tumbled nearly 14% following a disappointing strategic review, slashed financial guidance, a revenue miss, and a wave of analyst downgrades, making it one of the S&P 500's worst performers of the day. Freeport-McMoRan sank 7.3% as copper prices retreated sharply from their recent record highs. On the upside, Elevance Health jumped 4.1% after the health benefits company said it plans to reaffirm its full-year 2026 earnings and benefit-expense guidance in upcoming investor meetings. Within the Dow, Apple led gainers, rising 1.60%, followed by Coca-Cola at 1.38% and Walmart at 1.13% — a clear rotation toward defensive, non-cyclical names — while Nvidia led decliners at 2.21%, alongside Honeywell International at 1.57% and IBM at 1.55%.
Magnificent Seven trading was led by Apple's continued strength, up 1.60% and extending its recent run as a relative safe haven from the AI-capex spending pressuring peers, while Nvidia fell 2.21% amid broader semiconductor weakness. Reliable closing figures for Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Tesla were not available in today's reporting at publication time.
Hot Sectors to Watch
Semiconductors extended a multi-session pullback, and today's move looked more like profit-taking than a fundamental reassessment. Intel fell 5.7% following what TheStreet described as a "massive multi-session rally," with investors locking in gains amid a broader chipmaker selloff tied directly to rising 10-year Treasury yields and surging oil prices rather than any company-specific news; Nvidia's 2.21% decline within the Dow reinforced the same macro-driven pattern. This continues a trend that has now persisted across several sessions this week, suggesting the sector rotation away from richly valued AI hardware names is a confirmed short-term trend rather than a single-day blip, directly tied to the trajectory of long-end yields. Materials told a related but distinct story: Freeport-McMoRan's 7.3% drop reflected a genuine reversal in copper prices after their recent record run, a signal worth watching for whether the broader "AI infrastructure buildout" commodity trade — which has also lifted power, grid, and data-center-adjacent materials names this year — is entering an early rotation phase or simply consolidating gains. Energy, by contrast, remains the year's standout confirmed trend: with WTI now up 78.5% year-to-date and Brent and WTI both closing at their highest levels since May, the sector's leadership position among S&P 500 groups this year continued to reinforce itself even as the broader market fell.
Major Story of the Day
Oil crossing back above the psychologically important $100-a-barrel threshold was the session's dominant macro story. West Texas Intermediate crude closed at $102.48, up 6.7% on the day, while Brent crude futures gained 5.9% to settle at $107.63 — the highest close for both benchmarks since May 19. Since the U.S.-Iran war began at the end of February, WTI is now up 52.9%, and up 78.5% for the year overall. The energy shock arrived alongside a hotter-than-expected August producer price report, which showed prices rose 0.4% from the previous month as the Iran war lifted wholesale energy costs — a direct read-through from crude prices into the broader cost structure facing U.S. businesses. The Treasury Department, for its part, completed a buyback of $5.19 billion of a planned $6 billion in long-dated Treasuries Thursday, part of Secretary Scott Bessent's ongoing effort to manage the yield curve even as energy-driven inflation pressure complicates that task.
After-Hours Earnings: Oracle and Adobe Report
Oracle reported fiscal first-quarter 2027 results today after the close, delivering a report management framed as driven by "triple digit growth in cloud infrastructure revenues." Cloud revenue (combined infrastructure and applications) reached $11.6 billion, or 60% of total revenue, up 62% year-over-year, powered by 121% growth in Cloud Infrastructure (IaaS) and 10% growth in Cloud Applications (SaaS); software revenue declined 3% to $5.6 billion as customers continue migrating off on-premises systems. Oracle booked more than $30 billion of additional AI cloud contracts during the quarter, building on the roughly $638 billion remaining performance obligation balance investors had been watching heading into the print as the key test of whether the company's enormous backlog is converting into recognized revenue at pace. For the current quarter, Oracle guided total revenue growth of 30%–34% and total cloud revenue growth of 64%–70% in constant currency, with non-GAAP EPS of $1.83 to $1.91. For the full 2027 fiscal year, the company raised its non-GAAP EPS guidance to $8.10, while reconfirming its prior total revenue guidance of at least $90 billion. The company also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.50 per share, payable October 23, and unveiled a new Oracle AI Data Platform alongside a fully agentic AI healthcare management system, underscoring the breadth of its push to embed AI across its enterprise software portfolio. A specific stock price reaction was not available in reporting gathered as of publication.
Adobe also reported fiscal third-quarter results today after the close, delivering its fifth consecutive quarter of beating consensus EPS estimates, though the stock's initial reaction was negative once again — a pattern that has now defined most of the company's recent earnings reactions. Adobe posted revenue of $6.76 billion, up 13% year-over-year and ahead of the $6.70 billion consensus, with adjusted earnings per share of $6.13 versus a $6.09 estimate. AI-first annualized recurring revenue grew more than 150% year-over-year, directly addressing persistent investor skepticism about whether the company's generative AI investments — chiefly its Firefly product suite — can meaningfully offset competitive pressure on its core Creative Cloud franchise. Adobe raised its full-year revenue and non-GAAP EPS targets on the strength of that AI momentum. Despite the clean beat-and-raise, shares initially fell about 2% in the immediate aftermath of the report, extending a difficult pattern for the stock, which had risen after only two of its last twelve quarterly reports and remains down roughly 27% for the year. The report also arrives amid a leadership transition, with incoming CEO Anil Chakravarthy set to succeed longtime chief Shantanu Narayen on December 1 — a change that had itself triggered a 6.7% stock decline when announced on September 3, and one that now leaves Chakravarthy to build on today's AI-monetization progress as he prepares to take the helm.
Explore more exclusive insights at nextfin.ai.
