Stock Market Update

[BRIEFING.COM] The S&P 500 (-1.0%), Nasdaq Composite (-1.3%), and DJIA (-1.0%) are modestly improved from their worst levels this morning, though still firmly below their baselines. 

In the information technology sector (-1.7%), Microsoft (MSFT 494.25, -13.24, -2.61%), NVIDIA (NVDA 182.54, -4.06, -2.18%), and Anthropic announced new strategic partnerships. Anthropic is scaling its rapidly growing Claude AI model on Microsoft Azure, powered by NVIDIA, which will broaden access to Claude and provide Azure enterprise customers with expanded model choice and new capabilities. Anthropic has committed to purchase $30 billion of Azure compute capacity and to contract additional compute capacity up to 1 gigawatt.

Factory orders increased 1.4% month-over-month in August (Briefing.com consensus: 0.8%) following a 1.3% decline in July. Excluding transportation, factory orders increased 0.1% month-over-month following a 0.5% increase in July. Shipments of manufactured goods slipped 0.1% on the heels of a 0.9% increase in July.

The key takeaway from the report is that business spending remained on an upswing, evidenced by back-to-back increases in new orders for nondefense capital goods, excluding aircraft, in July and August.