Oracle Leaps 35.9%

Wall Street closed mostly higher to notch more records on Wednesday.

• The S&P 500 added 0.3% Wednesday and set an all-time high for a second straight day.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.5%, and
• The Nasdaq composite inched up less than 0.1% to add to its record set the day before.

Oracle helped lead the way after giving a stunning forecast for revenue growth in upcoming years, but a drop for Apple weighed on indexes, the AP reports.

Stocks have set records in large part because Wall Street is expecting the economy to pull off a delicate balancing act: slowing enough to convince the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, but not so much that it causes a recession, all while inflation remains under control. Many things must go right for that to happen, and an encouraging signal came from a report on Wednesday saying inflation at the US wholesale level unexpectedly slowed in August. It's a relief following months of data suggesting inflation would be tough to get under the Fed's target of 2%, particularly with President Trump's tariffs pushing upward on prices.

• A potentially more important report is coming Thursday, which will show how bad inflation has been for US households, but Wednesday's update "essentially rolled out the red carpet for a Fed rate cut next week," according to Chris Larkin, managing director, trading and investing, at E-Trade from Morgan Stanley.

Oracle said AI-related demand is set to send its revenue surging. CEO Safra Catz said Oracle signed four multi-billion dollar contracts during its latest quarter, and it expects cloud infrastructure revenue to jump 77% to $18 billion this fiscal year. After that, it expects such revenue to soar to $144 billion in just four years. "AI Changes Everything," Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said in a statement. Oracle stock leaped 35.9%, making Ellison the world's richest man. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which makes chips used in AI and other computing, saw its stock that trades in the US climb 2.1% after it said its revenue jumped nearly 34% in August from a year earlier.

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Klarna, the Swedish "buy now, pay later" financial services provider, jumped 14.5% in its first day as a publicly traded stock on the New York Stock Exchange. On the losing side of Wall Street was Apple, whose drop of 3.2% helped drag the Dow lower and was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500. Some analysts said its unveiling of new iPhones the day before contained no surprises and may not drive much growth in demand. Synopsys, which helps customers design and engineer chips, fell 35.8% after reporting profit for the latest quarter that fell short of analysts' expectations. So did its forecast for profit in the current quarter.