NEW YORK (AP) — Most U.S. stocks are rising on Thursday, but a sell-off for Oracle is weighing on Wall Street as investors question whether its big spending on artificial-intelligence technology will pay off.
The S&P 500 was mostly unchanged and hovering around its all-time high, which was set in October. Drops for AI-related stocks dragged the Nasdaq composite down 0.6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was on track for a record with a gain of 625 points, or 1.3%, as of 1:05 p.m. Eastern time.
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Specialists Alex Weitzman, left, and Meric Greenbaum work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Trader William Lawrence works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Gregg Maloney works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Michael Gallucci works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Financial information is displayed while traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A television on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, display a news conference with Fed chairman Jerome Powell, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Oracle tumbled 13.4% and had briefly been on track for its worst day since 2001, when the dot-com bubble was still deflating. It reported 14% growth in revenue for the latest quarter, which came up just short of analysts' expectations, even though its profit topped forecasts.
Doubts remain about whether all the spending that Oracle is doing on AI technology will produce the payoff of increased profits and productivity that proponents are promising. Analysts said they were surprised by how much Oracle may spend on AI investments this fiscal year, and questions continue about how the company will pay for it.
Such doubts are weighing on the AI industry broadly, even as many billions of dollars continue to flow in. Those questions had helped drag the broad U.S. stock market through some sharp and scary swings last month.
Nvidia, the chip company that’s become the poster child of the AI boom and is raking in close to $20 billion each month, fell 2.8% Thursday. It was the single heaviest weight on the S&P 500.
Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said it will continue to buy chips from Nvidia, but it’s now taking a policy of “chip neutrality,” where it will use “whatever chips our customers want to buy. There are going to be a lot of changes in AI technology over the next few years and we must remain agile in response to those changes.”
Even with the struggles for AI-related companies, most of the U.S. market rose Thursday, including three out of every four stocks in the S&P 500.
Eli Lilly helped lead the way and climbed 2.6% after announcing encouraging results from a clinical trial for adult patients who are obese or overweight and have knee osteoarthritis, without diabetes.
The Walt Disney Co. added 1.4% after OpenAI said the entertainment giant is investing $1 billion in it. It's part of a three-year agreement that will also allow OpenAI to use more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters to generate short, user-prompted social videos.
Planet Labs PBC soared 36.7% after the provider of satellite images used by governments and businesses reported stronger results for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
On the losing end of Wall Street, Oxford Industries tumbled 20.8% after the company behind Tommy Bahama and Lilly Pulitzer pointed to how its customers have been seeking out deals and are “highly value-driven.” CEO Tom Chubb said the start of the holiday shopping season has been weaker than the company expected, and it cut its forecast for revenue for the full year.
Vera Bradley, meanwhile, dropped 22.3% after reporting a larger loss for the latest quarter than expected.
In the bond market, Treasury yields slipped after a report said the number of U.S. workers applying for unemployment benefits jumped last week by more than economists expected. That’s a potential indication of rising layoffs and could encourage the Federal Reserve to keep cutting interest rates to bolster the job market.
A day earlier, yields fell after the Fed cut its main interest rate for the third time this year and indicated another cut may be ahead in 2026. Wall Street loves lower interest rates because they can boost the economy and send prices for investments higher, even if they potentially make inflation worse.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.12% from 4.13% on Wednesday and from 4.18% on Tuesday.
In stock markets abroad, indexes ticked higher in Europe after falling in much of Asia.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index sank 0.9%, hurt by a sharp drop for SoftBank Group Corp., which is a major investor in AI.
AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.
Specialists Alex Weitzman, left, and Meric Greenbaum work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Trader William Lawrence works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Gregg Maloney works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Michael Gallucci works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Financial information is displayed while traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A television on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, display a news conference with Fed chairman Jerome Powell, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee executed Harold Wayne Nichols by lethal injection Thursday in Nashville for the 1988 rape and murder of Karen Pulley, a 20-year-old student at Chattanooga State University.
Nichols, 64, had confessed to killing Pulley as well as raping several other women in the Chattanooga area. Although he expressed remorse at trial, he admitted he would have continued his violent behavior had he not been arrested. He was sentenced to death in 1990.
“To the people I've harmed, I'm sorry,” Nichols said in his final statement. Before Nichols died, a spiritual adviser spoke to him and recited the Lord’s Prayer. They both became emotional and Nichols nodded as the adviser talked, witnesses said.
Media witnesses reported that a sheet was pulled up to just above Nichols' waist and he was strapped to a gurney with a long tube running to an IV insertion site on the inside of his elbow. There was a spot of blood near the injection site. At one point he took a very heavy breath and his whole torso rose up. He then took a series of short, huffing breaths that witnesses said sounded like snorting or snoring. Nichols’ face turned red and he groaned. His breathing then appeared to slow, then stop, and his face became purple before he was pronounced dead, witnesses said.
Nichols’ attorneys unsuccessfully sought to have his sentence commuted to life in prison, citing the fact that he took responsibility for his crimes and pleaded guilty. His clemency petition stated “he would be the first person to be executed for a crime he pleaded guilty to since Tennessee re-enacted the death penalty in 1978.”
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to issue a stay of the execution on Thursday.
In a recent interview, Pulley's sister, Lisette Monroe, said the wait for Nichols' execution has been “37 years of hell.” She described her sister as “gentle, sweet and innocent,” and said she hopes that after the execution she'll be able to focus on the happy memories of Pulley instead of her murder.
Jeff Monroe, Lisette Monroe’s husband and Pulley’s brother-in-law, said the family “was destroyed by evil” the night she was killed.
“Taking a life is serious and we take no pleasure in it,” he said during a news conference following the execution. “However, the victims, and there were many, were carefully stalked and attacked. The crimes, and there were many, were deliberate, violent, and horrific.”
Pulley, who was 20 when she was killed, had just finished Bible school and was attending college in Chattanooga to become a paralegal, Jeff Monroe said.
“Karen was bubbly, happy, selfless, and looking forward to the life before her,” he said.
Nichols has seen two previous execution dates come and go. The state earlier planned to execute him in August 2020, but Nichols was given a reprieve due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, Nichols had selected to die in the electric chair — a choice allowed in Tennessee for inmates who were convicted of crimes before January 1999.
Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol in 2020 used three different drugs in series, a process that inmates’ attorneys claimed was riddled with problems. Their concerns were shown to have merit in 2022, when Gov. Bill Lee paused executions, including a second execution date for Nichols. An independent review of the state’s lethal injection process found that none of the drugs prepared for the seven inmates executed in Tennessee since 2018 had been properly tested.
The Tennessee Department of Correction issued a new execution protocol in last December that utilizes the single drug pentobarbital. Attorneys for several death row inmates have sued over the new rules, but a trial in that case is not scheduled until April. Nichols declined to chose an execution method this time, so his execution will be by lethal injection by default.
His attorney Stephen Ferrell explained in an email that “the Tennessee Department of Correction has not provided enough information about Tennessee’s lethal execution protocol for our client to make an informed decision about how the state will end his life.”
Nichols' attorneys on Monday won a court ruling granting access to records from two earlier executions using the new method, but the state has not yet released the records and says it will appeal. During Tennessee’s last execution in August, Byron Black said he was “hurting so bad” in his final moments. The state has offered no explanation for what might have caused the pain.
Many states have had difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs as anti-death penalty activists have put pressure on drug companies and other suppliers. Between the shortages and legal challenges over botched executions, some states have moved to alternative methods of execution including a firing squad in South Carolina and nitrogen gas in Alabama.
Including Nichols, a total of 46 men have died by court-ordered execution this year in the U.S.
People enter the area reserved for anti-death penalty demonstators outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the execution of Harold Wayne Nichols, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
People gather in the area reserved for anti-death penalty demonstrators outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the execution of Harold Wayne Nichols, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
An anti-death penalty demonstrator holds rosary bead outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the execution of Harold Wayne Nichols, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
People enter the area reserved for anti-death penalty demonstators outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the execution of Harold Wayne Nichols, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
An anti-death penalty demonstrator paces in an area reserved for protesting outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the execution of Harold Wayne Nichols, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Chris Farrar stands in the area reserved for anti-death penalty demonstrators outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the execution of Harold Wayne Nichols, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Bebe Harton, left, and Sam Shideler, right, hug in the area reserved for anti-death penalty demonstrators outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the execution of Harold Wayne Nichols, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Rev. Rick Laude stands in the area reserved for pro-death penalty advocates outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the execution of Harold Wayne Nichols, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
FILE - This undated photo released by the Tennessee Department of Corrections shows Harold Wayne Nichols in Tennessee. (Tennessee Department of Corrections via the Chattanooga Free Press via AP, File)
