🔶 Wall Street under pressure from the Iran war, rising oil prices and artificial intelligence

Concerns about a further escalation in the war with Iran and investor caution ahead of the release of key U.S. inflation data have put pressure on Wall Street.

While oil prices, due to geopolitical tensions, for the first time in several weeks rose again to near the $100 border, shares of software-producing companies in particular came under pressure.

The Dow Jones index of large companies fell by 1.2% to reach 52,786 points. The Nasdaq technology index decreased by one-third of a percent to 26,421 points, and the S&P 500 index also fell by six-tenths of a percent to 7,674 points.

Investors are eagerly awaiting reports related to producer and consumer prices, which are expected to be released this week. These data are considered decisive for the next decision of the Federal Reserve (the U.S. central bank) regarding interest rates on September 15 and 16.

After the release of an unexpected U.S. jobs report in August, traders now, based on the FedWatch tool of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), have expectations of a 60% likelihood of an interest rate hike.

In addition, the recent rise in yields on U.S. Treasury safe bonds has made stocks less attractive to investors.

In the technology sector, the introduction of OpenAI’s new model “GPT-6 Astra” unsettled the market. Concern that artificial intelligence could increasingly replace the services of specialized software companies

sent Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Intuit shares sliding. The S&P software and services sector index fell for the second consecutive day.

Daniela Gelbrok, portfolio manager at Argent Capital Management, said that Astra has once again intensified concerns about fundamental change in the software industry.

She added: “This has revived an old trend we had become accustomed to for a while: the stocks of semiconductor companies and companies that benefit from investments in data centers are performing well, while software stocks are showing weak performance.”

In this regard, Intel and Qualcomm shares rose after a deal with Amazon to develop custom artificial intelligence chips.

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