Wall Street stocks end flat in choppy trading as Treasury yields ease

U.S. stocks finished little changed on Thursday, erasing initial declines, as Treasury yields eased off recent highs after the House of Representatives passed U.S. President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill.

Recent concerns about the U.S. deficit have pushed up Treasury yields and pressured stocks, but longer-dated yields fell on Thursday, allowing stocks to take a breather.

The benchmark U.S. 10-year note yield fell 5.4 basis points to 4.543% after hitting its highest since February.

The Republican-controlled House voted by a slim margin to pass the bill, which would fulfill many of Trump’s campaign pledges to his political base, but will increase the $36.2 trillion U.S. debt pile by $3.8 trillion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Investors are also weighing the impact of Trump’s tariffs on U.S. imports, including on consumer prices.

“The problem today was the tax bill, which appears to have passed,” said George Young, partner and portfolio manager at Villere & Co in New Orleans. “But we are thinking about bigger potential problems and the two main things on the table are tariffs and interest rates.”

“The market hates uncertainty and we’ve still got this overhang of the tariffs and the bond market, which is totally apolitical and totally international,” Young added.

According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 lost 4.89 points, or 0.08%, to end at 5,839.72 points, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 45.56 points, or 0.27%, to 18,923.23. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 11.37 points, or 0.03%, to 41,849.07.

Megacap growth stocks, including Nvidia, Amazon and Tesla, rose. Alphabet was firmer after touching a nearly three-month high.

Snowflake jumped after the cloud computing firm raised its fiscal 2026 product revenue forecast.

Analog Devices fell despite the semiconductor manufacturer beating Wall Street estimates for quarterly results.

Shares of solar energy companies including First Solar dropped as Trump’s tax bill is expected to end a number of green-energy subsidies.

MNTN, an advertising platform for internet-connected TVs which has actor Ryan Reynolds as its chief creative officer, secured a valuation of $1.62 billion after its shares jumped 31.25% in their debut on the NYSE on Thursday, signaling continued momentum in the recovering IPO market.

The U.S. adtech’s stock opened at $21 apiece, compared with the IPO price of $16, boosting prospects for other companies looking to offer first-time share sales.

MNTN and some existing stockholders on Wednesday sold 11.70 million shares at the top of its marketed range of $14 to $16 per share, raising $187.2 million.

MNTN’s IPO comes on the heels of Israeli trading platform eToro’s bumper Nasdaq debut last week, marking the first U.S. IPO to proceed after tariff uncertainty scuttled several planned launches last month.

Founded in 2009 by Mark Douglas, MNTN launched its performance TV marketing (PTV) in 2018, which leverages a rapidly accelerating transition from cable to streaming by enabling small and medium businesses to provide targeted performance marketing solutions on internet TVs.

The number of customers for the company’s PTV offering rose nearly 89% year-over-year for the three months ended March 31, company filings show.

STRENGTH IN TECH

U.S. President Donald Trump’s flip-flop on trade and geopolitical policy last month, coupled with his attacks on U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, led to global M&A activity in April falling to its lowest level in more than 20 years.

However, sectors focused on intellectual property are affected less by tariffs, some analysts have said. The technology sector was responsible for almost 40% of the nearly $600 billion in deals signed this year in the U.S.

“Engineers make up a third of the employees at MNTN, and the company is planning to grow that to around 50% by the end of the year,” Douglas, chief executive, told Reuters in an interview.