STORY: U.S. stocks closed mostly lower in choppy trading on Wednesday following data that showed more weakness in the U.S. labor market.
The Dow ticked up marginally, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both ended slightly down.
A report from the Labor Department showed job openings fell to a 3-1/2-year low in July, likely strengthening the case for an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve after its policy meeting later this month.
This comes ahead of August's nonfarm payrolls, released Friday, which is also expected to show further cooling of the labor market.
Dan Eye is chief investment officer at Fort Pitt Capital Group.
"We think it's important for investors to really realize that that we don't get to the point where the Fed can cut interest rates or normalize interest rates, where we can get inflation back in the box, you know, back in line with with long term trend levels, if you know the economy is still growing at 3 plus percent, if we're still adding 250-and 300 thousand jobs to the payroll every month. So we think we're in this last leg of the normalization process that frankly, you know really, really needs to happen and you know a slowing economic backdrop is certainly part of that process."
Stocks on the move included Nvida, down more than 1.5% a day after a roughly 10% drop. The U.S. Justice Department sent a subpoena to the AI chip firm as it deepens its probe into the company's antitrust practices, according to a report.
Fellow chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices rose nearly 3% after it named a former Nvidia executive as senior vice president of global AI markets.
Stocks of other tech firms including Apple and Amazon slipped, while Tesla shares rose more than 4%.
One non-tech stock of note... Dollar Tree which plummeted more than 22% after the discount store operator trimmed its annual sales and profit forecasts.
