Wall Street's flip from AI stocks to elsewhere accelerates, while oil prices keep easing

NEW YORK (AP) — Most of Wall Street is rising Tuesday, even as stocks of computer chipmakers continue to tumble worldwide. Oil prices, meanwhile, are easing further from the two-month high they hit last week.

The S&P 500 rose 0.3% in afternoon trading, but the modest move masked big swings underneath the surface. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 628 points, or 1.2%, as of 1:39 p.m. Eastern time. The Nasdaq composite, which is full of AI stocks, was mostly unchanged after briefly dropping 9.3% below its record set last month.

The majority of the U.S. market rose after more companies delivered stronger profits for the spring than analysts expected. Coca-Cola climbed 4.3% after its revenue rose 7% despite what CEO Henrique Braun called “a dynamic consumer landscape.”

Sherwin-Williams rallied 8.8%, and Illinois Tool Works rose 4.1% after both likewise reported stronger earnings for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Stock prices generally follow the trend of corporate profits over the long term, and expectations are high for this most recent round with the U.S. stock market still near its all-time high.

Such expectations are weighing particularly heavily on stocks of chipmakers and other companies that have been huge winners from the boom in artificial-intelligence technology.

Micron Technology’s stock has more than tripled this year following gangbuster growth, for example. During the quarter through May 28, its revenue more than quadrupled from a year earlier.

But worries are rising about whether such growth is sustainable. Big spenders on computer memory could pull back on their investments if AI does not produce as much profit or productivity as promised. Lower-cost AI models from China could also mean less demand for memory and computing power than earlier expected.

Micron dropped 8.9% and was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500. Others also helping to drag the market lower were Advanced Micro Devices, down 7.2%, and Applied Materials, down 8%.

The losses for AI chip stocks were even sharper earlier in the day in other markets worldwide.

Sharp drops for SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics dragged South Korea’s Kospi index down 10.8%. The market’s losses were so big that trading was temporarily halted at times in Seoul.

“We believe the market was likely spooked by the progress of China’s chipmaking equipment capabilities, and was worried that this progress would threaten the competitive position of global chipmaking and chip equipment leaders,” said equity analyst Jing Jie Yu of Morningstar.

“That said, we believe the sell-off today is largely a knee-jerk reaction and overdone,” he said. The dominant position of global chipmaking leaders is unlikely to be threatened meaningfully, he said.

Several huge spenders on AI chips and data centers are scheduled to report their latest quarterly results this week, which could offer updates on how much they're planning to invest. Meta Platforms and Microsoft are reporting on Wednesday, while Amazon is due on Thursday.

Because AI superstar stocks have grown so big, their movements carry more weight on the S&P 500 and other indexes than many other companies. But Wall Street could hold up despite their swings if other, less-loved areas of the market are able to keep rising. It's a rotation that some strategists have suggested could be healthy for the overall stock market.

In the oil market, the price for a barrel of Brent crude to be delivered in October fell 4.6% to $81.94.

It's been falling since late last week, when the price for a barrel to be delivered in September briefly shot as high as $102.

Pushing up on prices have been worries that worsening fighting in the Middle East could slow the global flow of oil. On the other side, though, are hopes that the United States and Iran could still negotiate something to allow oil tankers to use the Strait of Hormuz to move crude.

Lower oil prices helped to ease Treasury yields in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.60% from 4.65% late Monday.

A weaker-than-expected reading on confidence among U.S. consumers also weighed on yields. Fewer consumers are saying they feel good about current business conditions, according to the latest survey released by the Conference Board Tuesday.

The drop in oil prices helped push traders to trim their bets that the Federal Reserve could announce a hike to interest rates following its latest meeting on Wednesday. They're forecasting a 29.4% probability, down from more than 36% a day before, according to data from CME Group.

Higher rates could keep a lid on inflation, but they would also slow the economy by making it more expensive for U.S. households and businesses to borrow. Long-term mortgage rates have already hit their highest level in nearly a year, chilling the housing industry.

AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him, Elaine Kurtenbach and Matt Ott contributed.

FILE - A Wall Street sign is seen outside of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Monday, March 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A screen shows the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, July 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Currency traders work at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, July 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

The screens show the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won and the Korean Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (KOSDAQ) at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, July 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A dealer walks past near the screens showing the foreign exchange rates at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, July 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

FILE - A train arrives at a Wall Street subway station in New York's Financial District on Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, July 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

STARKE, Fla. (AP) — A former police officer convicted of the on-duty rape and murder of a young girl was put to death Tuesday, the first of two lethal injections planned for a single day in Florida, hours before an 80-year-old man was to become the second-oldest inmate executed in modern U.S. history.

Tuesday marked the first time since two convicted murderers were executed on a single day — in Arkansas in 2017 — that a state has planned virtually back-to-back executions. It also comes 18 months after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis began stepping up executions at a pace unseen in Florida since the U.S. death penalty was reinstated in 1976, making his the busiest death chamber in the nation.

James Aren Duckett, 68, was pronounced dead at 1:19 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. The 11th inmate executed by the state this year, Duckett was convicted of raping and drowning an 11-year-old girl while working as a police officer in a small central Florida city in 1987.

Later Tuesday, barring any last-minute development, 80-year-old Dominick Anthony Occhicone was scheduled to become the oldest prisoner executed in Florida’s modern history starting at 6 p.m. Occhicone was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986.

Until Tuesday, a total of 17 executions had been carried out in the U.S. so far this year, with Florida leading the way with more executions than all other states combined.

Both men had made last-ditch appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, and last week, the Florida Supreme Court denied appeals by both men to intervene.

Duckett’s attorneys had unsuccessfully claimed Duckett’s innocence and argued the state’s handling of the DNA evidence is the reason for the inconclusive results.

Occhicone’s attorneys had argued that several age-related ailments, including kidney and prostate problems, could make his execution especially painful, constituting cruel and unusual punishment.

DeSantis hasn’t said why he scheduled two executions six hours apart, and Florida prison officials haven’t said whether the timing posed any logistical challenges. All Florida executions are by injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

DeSantis, who leaves office in January, oversaw a record 19 executions in 2025, more in a single year than any other Florida governor since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the U.S. in 1976. The previous high was eight executions set in 2014.

If the day’s final execution is carried out Tuesday evening, that would bring total executions for DeSantis’ final two years in office to 31 overall, compared to just nine executions during his first six years in office. With another execution set for August, 2026 could also be a record-breaking year.

Nationwide, it’s not uncommon for two different states to hold executions on the same date, but it’s less common for a single state to perform two in a day. Before Florida, Arkansas last executed two inmates on the same day by lethal injection three hours apart in April 2017. And Texas executed two convicted killers on the same day in 2000, the year the state executed 40 prisoners.

Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty urged DeSantis ahead of Tuesday to halt both executions.

“July 28 represents an unprecedented escalation of Florida’s use of the death penalty,” the group’s executive director, Grace Hanna, said in a statement. “These are two profoundly different cases, but they point to the same troubling reality: Florida continues to expand the use of capital punishment, despite mounting evidence that it is not what Floridians want.”

DeSantis has rarely commented on the pace of executions, but previously said that his goal is to bring justice to victims’ families who have waited decades for death sentences to be carried out.

“Some of these crimes were committed in the ’80s,” the governor said at a news conference last year. “Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly. If I honestly thought someone was innocent, I would not pull the trigger.”

If his execution proceeds as planned, Occhicone would become the state’s oldest inmate to be executed just weeks after two 74-year-old men briefly held that spot, the second man just a week older than the first at his time of death.

Occhicone also would become the second-oldest prisoner known to be put to death in modern U.S. history after 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr. was executed in Alabama in 2018 for a wave of southern mail bombs in 1989 that killed a federal judge and wounded a Black civil rights attorney.

DeSantis initially signed a death warrant for Duckett in February, scheduling his execution for March 31. But the Florida Supreme Court issued a stay just days before the planned execution to allow for DNA testing of old evidence that couldn’t be performed at the time of the original trial because of technological limitations. The results came back inconclusive, meaning that they did not exonerate Duckett or definitively connect him to the crime. Judges have allowed the jury verdict to stand.

When Occhicone’s death warrant was signed late last month, his was the only execution scheduled for Tuesday. But after the Florida Supreme Court removed Duckett’s stay on July 8, DeSantis signed a new death warrant on July 14 and added Duckett to Occhicone’s execution date, which hadn’t been done in Florida in more than 60 years. Florida Department of Corrections records show multiple executions on a single day were more common in the past, with the last being on May 12, 1964.

This combo from photos provided by Florida Department of Corrections shows from left, James Aren Duckett and Dominick Anthony Occhicone. (Florida Department of Corrections via AP)

FILE - Clouds hover over the entrance of the Florida State Prison in Starke, Fla., Aug. 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Curt Anderson, file)