North American stock markets are drifting in mixed trading on Tuesday morning, with Apple dropping sharply in early trading ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.
Some on Wall Street worry that a Democratic sweep of Congress this time around could lead to more regulations and restrictions on AI development. But Donald Trump would still be president and have the power to veto. And Wall Street generally prefers split control of Washington, which it sees as offering less risk of transformative policies that could reshape the economy.
Tuesdayโs midterm elections may also be keeping financial markets unsteady, but history suggests that they may not matter much for the broad market. Going back to 1970, the S&P 500 has had a positive return in the six months following a midterm election every time, according to Brock Weimer, an analyst at Edward Jones.
The S&P 500 added 0.2 per cent in early trading, even though more stocks fell within the index than rose. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 232 points, or 0.4 per cent, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5 per cent higher.
On Bay Street, the TSX was down about 0.75 per cent as of 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, with shares of Shopify down nine per cent after reporting mixed earnings results.
Stock markets have been shaky recently as technology and artificial-intelligence stocks have swung on worries their prices shot too high in the frenzy around AI. Several of the most influential AI-related stocks held up better on Tuesday, which supported the market, though they flipped from gains in the morning to losses in the afternoon a day earlier.
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Nvidia rose 3.1 per cent and was the strongest force pushing upward on the S&P 500 Tuesday. CoreWeave rose 2.6 per cent. The company thatโs borrowed money to buy AI chips that it rents out to customers over the cloud has been at the center of the industryโs swings recently.
Apple was long seen on Wall Street as a Big Tech company thatโs less dependent on AI. But itโs still feeling the effects of the AI boom.
Memory chips for computers have become more expensive because of the demand created by the rush to build AI data centers. Those additional expenses are hitting Apple, which said it expects to make less profit from each $1 of its revenue during the final three months of this year.
That helped send Appleโs stock down 3.4 per cent, even though the seller of iPhones and Mac computers reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
Palantir Technologies fell 4.2 per cent even though it likewise reported a better profit than expected. The software company said it made more money from working with U.S. companies than from the U.S. government for the first time, as U.S. commercial revenue soared 148 per cent from a year earlier.
On the winning side of Wall Street Tuesday were stocks of several companies that reported stronger profits for the summer than analysts expected.
Celanese climbed 4.9 per cent, and DuPont added seven per cent.
Expectations are high for all kinds of companies to continue to deliver big gains in profits as the U.S. economy keeps chugging along, even with high inflation and elevated interest rates. That helped send the S&P 500 to a record high last month.
In the oil market, prices continued to swing. Brent climbed above US$107 per barrel in the morning before briefly dropping below $101 on continued uncertainty about what will happen in the war with Iran. It was most recently down 0.9 per cent at $103.80.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed across Europe and Asia. South Koreaโs Kospi dropped 3.6 per cent for one of the worldโs sharpest moves following losses for its two tech giants, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
Stocks rose 0.3 per cent in Australia after the countryโs central bank raised its benchmark interest rate for the fifth time this year.
โ with a file from Globalโs Ariel Rabinovitch
© 2026 The Canadian Press
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