It Was a Rough Day for Target, Other Retailers

US stocks drifted to a mixed finish on Wednesday, though the modest moves for indexes masked some thrashing underneath the surface.

• The S&P 500 ended barely changed after trading lower for much of the day. It rose 0.13 points, or less than 0.1%, to 5,917.11.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 139.53 points, or 0.3%, to 43,408.47.
• The Nasdaq composite fell 21.32 points, or 0.1%, to 18,966.14. .

Target led the market lower and lost more than a fifth of its value after the retailer gave a dour forecast for the holiday shopping season. The day's headliner is due after the close of trading, when Nvidia will release its latest earnings report.

Target's 21.4% drop followed its report showing weaker profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Besides Target, several lower-priced retailers were among the biggest losers in the S&P 500, the AP reports. Dollar General fell 4.2%, and Dollar Tree sank 2.6%. On the winning end of Wall Street was Williams-Sonoma, which jumped 27.5% after the home retailer delivered better profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The parent of Pottery Barn also said it expects overall sales to fall by less this fiscal year than it had earlier forecast.

Trading in the options market suggests Nvidia's profit report is the most anticipated event left in 2024, more than even the Federal Reserve's upcoming meeting on interest rates, according to Barclays Capital. Nvidia has grown into a $3.6 trillion behemoth because of nearly insatiable demand for its chips used in artificial-intelligence technology . It's grown so fast, with its stock nearly tripling for the year through Tuesday, that pressure has grown for it to show it can keep leapfrogging past analysts' already high expectations. (More stock market stories.)