Wall Street Ends Mixed After Fed's Rate Cut. Chinese ETFs and ADRs Jump, Baidu up 11%, PDD up 4.5%; Quantum Computing Shares Rally, QBTS up 19%, RGTI up 10%

The Nasdaq and the S&P 500 closed lower in choppy trading on Wednesday, after the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates by an expected 25 basis points and Fed Chair Jerome Powell cited the weak job market.

Market Snapshot

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 260.42 points, or 0.57%, to 46,018.32, the S&P 500 lost 6.41 points, or 0.10%, to 6,600.35 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 72.63 points, or 0.33%, to 22,261.33. Plug Power rose 19%, Opendoor Technologies Inc rose 14%.

Market Movers

Nvidia fell 2.6% after a report from the Financial Times said China's internet regulator had banned the country's biggest tech companies from buying its artificial-intelligence chips. The Cyberspace Administration of China told TikTok parent ByteDance and e-commerce giant Alibaba, among others, to end testing and orders of Nvidia's tailored-made products for China, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

"We can only be in service of a market if a country wants us to be," said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at a press conference in London.

"I'm disappointed with what I see but they have larger agendas to work out between China and the United States," Huang added. "I'm patient about it. We'll continue to be supportive of the Chinese government and Chinese companies as they wish."

Chinese ETFs and ADRs jumped. Baidu rose 11%, NIO Inc. rose 6%, PDD Holdings Inc rose 4.5%, Alibaba rose 2.4%.

Quantum computing shares rallied. D-Wave Quantum Inc. rose 19%, Rigetti Computing rose 10%, Arqit Quantum Inc. rose 7%, IONQ Inc. rose 5%.

StubHub Holdings opened at $25.35 in the stock's trading debut Wednesday. Its initial public offering was priced at $23.50. Shares of the popular marketplace for ticket resales were down 6.4% at $22 after rising earlier in the session.

Workday jumped 7.3% after activist investor Elliott Investment Management disclosed a $2 billion stake in the human relations software company. Elliott praised Workday's CEO Carl Eschenbach and said the company was "a unique software franchise with industry-leading growth potential, best-in-class customer retention and a proven management team."

Tesla was up 1% after ending the previous session with a gain of 2.8% and extending its winning streak to six consecutive days. It has risen 22% over the span, according to Dow Jones Market Data. One reason for the stock's recent gains was CEO Elon Musk's $1 billion purchase of the electric-vehicle maker's shares.

Lyft and Alphabet's Waymo announced they would be expanding their fully autonomous ride-hailing service to Nashville in 2026. Lyft shares surged 13%, while Alphabet declined 0.7%. Lyft's larger rival, Uber Technologies, fell 5%.

FedEx fell 0.8% to $225.78 after it was downgraded by Evercore ISI to In Line from Outperform. Analysts cut their price target on the shares to $243 from $249, saying "ongoing demand headwinds" were "likely to provide greater risk to near-term EPS estimates." FedEx is scheduled to report earnings on Thursday.

Netflix rose 2.3% to $1,228.50 after it was upgraded to Buy from Hold at Loop Capital. The analysts also raised their price target on the streaming giant to $1,350 from $1,150.

Oracle was down 1.7%. Shares closed up 1.5% on Tuesday after The Wall Street Journal reported that under an emerging deal TikTok's U.S. business would be controlled by an investor consortium, including Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz, with the database-software company handling user data at its facilities in Texas.

IONQ Inc. rose 5.1%. The quantum-computing company said it had completed the acquisition of British start-up Oxford Ionics for $1.075 billion. The deal earned clearance from the U.K. Investment Security Unit last week. IonQ also said it reached a deal to acquire Vector Atomic, the maker of quantum-sensing technology, for $250 million in an all-stock transaction.

General Mills, the owner of brands such as Betty Crocker and Cheerios, was down 0.8% after reporting fiscal first-quarter earnings that topped analysts' estimates and reaffirming its fiscal 2026 outlook. First-quarter sales, however, fell 6.8% from a year earlier.

Market News

Fed Approves Quarter-Point Interest Rate Cut and Sees Two More Coming This Year

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday approved a widely anticipated rate cut and signaled that two more are on the way before the end of the year as concerns intensified over the U.S. labor market, even as inflation is still in the air.

In an 11-to-1 vote signaling less dissent than Wall Street had anticipated, the Federal Open Market Committee lowered its benchmark overnight lending rate by a quarter percentage point. The decision puts the overnight funds rate in a range between 4.00%-4.25%.

Newly installed Governor Stephen Miran was the only policymaker voting against the quarter-point move, instead advocating for a half-point cut.

IonQ Signs MoU with Department of Energy for Deployment of Quantum Technologies in Space

IONQ Inc. stock was surging after the quantum computing company announced an MoU with the U.S. Department of Energy to advance the deployment of quantum technologies in space.

The memorandum of understanding comes in the wake of the department's growing Quantum in Space initiative.