By George Glover and Kit Norton
The tech rally looked to be losing some momentum Wednesday ahead of with earnings from artificial-intelligence hardware supplier Marvell Technology after the closing bell.
Oil prices, meanwhile, continued to decline after Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps said the possibility of a return to war with the U.S. was "low." Optimism around the U.S. and Iran reaching a peace agreement, despite ongoing hostilities, appeared to be growing.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 0.3% while the S&P 500 declined 0.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial rose 0.2%.
Goldman Sachs boosted its year-end price target for the S&P 500 on Wednesday, citing solid earnings tied to the AI investment wave. Goldman sees the S&P 500 rising to 8000 by the end of the year.
The chip and tech stocks that have powered the market to record highs in recent weeks were mixed Wednesday.
Marvell Technology declined 1.6% ahead of the chips and networking company's first-quarter earnings, due after the closing bell. Micron Technology added 3.5% to trade at $927.20 after the memory-chip maker's valuation topped $1 trillion on Tuesday. Barclays raised its price target for Micron to $1,175 from $675 on Wednesday.
Sandisk gained 0.5% to $1,599.20. Barclays upgraded the stock to Overweight from Equal Weight and lifted its price target to $2,300 from $1,200 late Tuesday. The flash memory maker has been the S&P 500 index's hottest stock since spinning off from Western Digital last February, thanks to surging demand for memory from AI data centers. Western Digital shares advanced 1.8%.
Dycom Industries soared 31% after the telecom and data center infrastructure builder's fiscal 2027 first-quarter earnings handily beat Wall Street expectations amid strong demand.
Elsewhere, Iren gained 4.7%. The data-center operator late Tuesday announced it has entered into a $1.6 billion purchase agreement with Dell Technologies for Nvidia's air-cooled Blackwell systems to support a previously announced five-year $3.4 billion AI cloud contract. Dell stock rose 0.7%.
The misery for software and cybersecurity stocks, which have been laggards all year due to concerns about how AI could upend those industries, looked set to continue on Wednesday.
Zscaler slumped 29% following disappointing sales guidance. CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, and SentinelOne were among the other cybersecurity stocks caught up in the selloff.
However, it may not be all doom and gloom for cybersecurity investors.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, tech bull, wrote the selloff could present a chance for a bargain.
"We view the Zscaler guidance shortfall after the bell as company specific execution issues and not an indicator of broader sector issues, " Ives wrote in a research note.
Write to George Glover at george.glover@dowjones.com and Kit Norton at kit.norton@barrons.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 27, 2026 10:08 ET (14:08 GMT)
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