US STOCKS-S&P 500 little changed as investors eye Mideast talks

U.S. stocks dipped on Thursday, pausing after a strong start to the week, as investors digested corporate earnings and awaited signs of progress in the US-Iran peace talks.

U.S. stocks dipped on Thursday, pausing after a strong start to the week, as investors digested the latest round of corporate earnings and looked for signs of progress toward a peace deal between the U.S. and Iran. A robust ‌earnings season, which has tempered some concerns about the massive spending by AI-related companies, and growing optimism over possible progress toward a peace deal in the Iran war helped propel both the Dow Industrials and S&P 500 to record highs earlier this week. Oil prices rose, with U.S. crude up 2.75% at $77.29 a barrel and Brent at $82.35 per barrel, up 3.65%. Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported ‌that an Iranian parliamentary committee is reviewing a preliminary bill that would bar U.S., Israeli and other "hostile" vessels from transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

"You're seeing perhaps more muted response to ‌macro news than you would otherwise see, probably due to the fact of the summer and a little bit of fatigue, there's a little bit of headline fatigue, specifically around Iran," said Robert Bernstone, head of trading at SummitTX Capital in New York. "Iran is having less of an impact right now, to be clear, I'm not saying it has no impact ... tweets are something, headlines are something, but we really want to see the devil is in ⁠the details."

The ​recent indications of movement toward a peace deal helped ⁠push crude prices lower earlier in the week and, in turn, eased inflation worries and expectations for a rate hike from the Federal Reserve, which also served to push U.S. Treasury yields lower. Data storage company Western Digital tumbled ⁠nearly 11% and memory chip maker Sandisk dropped more than 4% in the wake of quarterly results. Both companies have surged this year, however, with Sandisk up more than 400% and Western Digital up about 170%. AppLovin ​plunged more than 18% after the marketing platform missed Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue, while Datadog plummeted about 17% after the cloud security firm said it expects revenue ⁠growth to slow in the third quarter. Both stocks were among the biggest drags on the benchmark S&P index. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 387.67 points, or 0.71%, to 53,961.45, the S&P 500 lost 5.72 points, or 0.07%, to 7,718.05 ⁠and ​the Nasdaq Composite gained 11.48 points, or 0.04%, to 26,374.92.

SPACEX LOCK-UP PERIOD EXPIRES SpaceX shares erased losses from earlier in the session and were up nearly 2%, defying expectations that they would be pressured by insider selling, as the lock-up period for early investors holding the stock expired. On the data front, the number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits increased slightly ⁠last week. The report came ahead of closely watched nonfarm payrolls figures for July due on Friday, which could be key in assessing the Federal Reserve's future interest rate path at ⁠a time when Chairman Kevin Warsh has scaled ⁠back on forward guidance from the central bank.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.46-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 1.35-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq. The S&P 500 posted 29 new 52-week highs and four new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 119 new highs and ‌63 new lows.