AI server makers carry the Nasdaq to a higher close while the Dow finishes fractionally lower

by Jonathan Mercer · August 12, 2026

Chief Markets Correspondent, US Market Current

US equities closed mixed on Wednesday, with three of the four major indexes higher and the Dow Jones Industrial Average the lone holdout. The S&P 500 finished at 7,748.53, up 0.26% from Tuesday's 7,728.20 close. The Nasdaq Composite ended at 26,588.49, a gain of 0.54% from 26,445.45. The Dow settled at 53,770.27, down 0.04% from 53,791.85. The Russell 2000 closed at 3,045.56, up 18.44 points or 0.61% from Tuesday's 3,027.12, according to Investing.com's quote page for the small-cap index.

The headline divergence understates what actually happened. This was not a session in which investors rotated out of equities and into safety. It was one in which the technology complex split against itself, and the price-weighted Dow happened to sit on the wrong side of that split.

The three strongest performers in the S&P 500 were all makers of servers and data center hardware. Super Micro Computer rose 19.02%, Dell Technologies gained 9.89% and Hewlett Packard Enterprise added 8.12%, per Investing.com's close-of-trade summary. The proximate cause was Super Micro's fiscal fourth-quarter report and its forward guidance. As 24/7 Wall St. reported Wednesday, the company posted quarterly revenue of $11.1 billion against consensus of roughly $11.2 billion, adjusted earnings of $1.70 a share versus $1.59 expected, and a gross margin of 17.6%. The guidance is what moved the group: Super Micro pointed to fiscal 2027 revenue of $65 billion to $72 billion against a consensus figure near $52.5 billion, and chief executive Charles Liang said the company had "generated more than $60 billion in new orders" over the past year and entered fiscal 2027 with "record backlog." Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise rose on the read-through to their own server businesses.

Megacap software went the other way. Microsoft fell 2.26% and Salesforce fell 2.12%, both ranking among the Dow's weakest components on the day. The index's worst performer was Home Depot, down 3.12%. On the other side of the Dow ledger, Nvidia rose 3.03%, Cisco Systems gained 2.92% and Walmart added 2.43%, according to the same Investing.com summary.

The mechanics of the Dow explain the rest. Because the index weights its 30 members by share price rather than market value, a percentage decline in a high-priced component carries more index points than an equivalent percentage gain in a cheaper one. Home Depot fell $11.05 to close at $343.43 and Microsoft lost $11.38 to $492.43, dollar moves large enough to weigh against the advances elsewhere in the index. Breadth on the wider tape was positive: advancing issues outnumbered declining ones 1,441 to 1,250 on the New York Stock Exchange and 1,804 to 1,591 on the Nasdaq, according to Investing.com.

Sector performance was similarly uneven. Technology, utilities and healthcare led the gainers, while basic materials, consumer goods and consumer services declined, Investing.com reported. Beyond the server names, the weakest large caps included Cencora, down 5.91%, First Solar, down 5.89%, and Axon Enterprise, down 5.74%.

Volatility pricing moved with the equity tape rather than against it. The CBOE Volatility Index closed at 14.55, down 4.78% on the session, which Investing.com flagged as a new six-month low. The reading reflects the fact that the day's marquee macro event, the July consumer price index, arrived without a surprise. Headline CPI rose 0.1% month over month and 3.4% year over year, both matching forecasts and easing from June's 3.5% annual pace.

Across other asset classes, December gold futures settled at $4,467.37, up 0.59%. West Texas Intermediate crude closed at $82.87 a barrel, down 0.40%, and Brent finished at $88.61, down 0.34%. The US dollar index futures contract edged up 0.18% to 99.89.

The next scheduled test arrives Thursday morning, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases July producer prices and the Labor Department reports weekly jobless claims, both at 8:30 a.m. ET. Neither had been published as of Wednesday evening. What Wednesday's close does establish is that the market's dispersion is currently running through the AI hardware supply chain, and that a single company's order book was enough to move three of the largest gainers in the S&P 500 in the same direction on the same day.