U.S. stocks fell sharply Thursday as Wednesday's Treasury-buyback relief rally proved short-lived, with bond yields rebounding back near their pre-intervention levels and a steep post-earnings selloff in Walmart shares dragging down the broader consumer sector. President Trump's threat of a sweeping new economic offensive against Iran pushed oil prices higher, adding to the pressure on risk sentiment. The session effectively erased Wednesday's gains, with the Dow suffering its worst single-day point decline this week as investors concluded that Tuesday's Treasury intervention was a temporary circuit-breaker rather than a durable fix for elevated borrowing costs.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.32% The S&P 500 Index fell 0.87% The Nasdaq Composite declined 1.00%
Stock & Sector Performance
Retail and consumer names were the session's clear standout for the wrong reasons. Advance Auto Parts plunged 21% despite posting an earnings beat, as a revenue miss and negative comparable sales overshadowed a raised full-year outlook, dragging peers AutoZone down 4% and O'Reilly Automotive down 2% in sympathy. Coty fell 18% after missing fourth-quarter earnings estimates and declining to provide full-year fiscal 2027 guidance, while Wolfspeed dropped roughly 11% after posting a wider-than-expected quarterly loss. On the Dow, Walmart led decliners, falling roughly 9%, followed by Boeing, down about 3.2%, Sherwin-Williams, down roughly 3%, and Home Depot, down close to 2.8%. Moderna gave back a substantial portion of Wednesday's record rally, trading down as much as 25.7% intraday before paring some of that loss, as investors booked profits following the biotech's biggest one-day gain in company history.
Magnificent Seven trading was comparatively subdued next to the retail and biotech-driven volatility. Nvidia was among the session's few gainers, adding roughly 1%, alongside modest strength in a handful of other blue-chip names. Comprehensive closing figures for Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Tesla were not reliably available in today's reporting at publication time, though the group as a whole did not emerge as a dominant driver of the day's losses, with the Dow's decline instead concentrated in Walmart and other consumer and industrial names. On the gainers' side of the Dow, Coca-Cola added about 1.2%, McDonald's rose roughly 0.9%, and Walt Disney gained about 0.8%.
Major Company Story of the Day
Walmart was the session's dominant single-stock story. The retailer reported fiscal second-quarter revenue of $187.9 billion, ahead of the $186.8 billion analyst estimate, and adjusted earnings per share of $0.81, well above the $0.74 consensus, while raising full-year adjusted EPS guidance to a midpoint of roughly $2.84. Despite the beat, U.S. comparable sales rose 2.6%, short of the 3.8% growth analysts had expected, and third-quarter revenue guidance of $185.6 billion at the midpoint came in below the $188.3 billion Wall Street was looking for. The stock fell roughly 9% as investors focused on signs of a cautious consumer making spending "trade-offs" amid elevated gas prices, overshadowing the headline earnings beat.
Today's Forecast Accuracy Review
Dow Jones Industrial Average — Diverged from expectations. The index closed at 52,759.21, breaking decisively below this morning's projected 53,000–53,200 support zone as the Walmart-driven selloff and renewed yield pressure proved sharper and more broad-based than the "retracement" framing anticipated, with Boeing, Sherwin-Williams, and Home Depot compounding the damage beyond Walmart alone.
S&P 500 — Partially matched expectations. The index closed at 7,641.16, undercutting the morning's 7,650–7,690 support band by a modest margin; the "choppy pullback" regime call was directionally correct, but the retreat ran slightly deeper than anticipated as rate-sensitive sectors broadly participated in the decline.
Nasdaq Composite — Partially matched expectations. The index closed at 26,067.17, breaking below the projected 26,150–26,330 support range; the "volatile consolidation with limited single-name leadership" characterization proved accurate in that no single mega-cap catalyst drove the move, but the magnitude of the yield-driven pullback exceeded the anticipated support level.
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