Broader gains across Wall Street on Thursday provided enough support to hold the major indexes on an even keel, even as technology stocks tied to artificial intelligence continued to swing with each new question about how long the sector's spending wave might hold. Pulling back from an early deficit, the S&P 500 closed the session up 0.2%, marking only the second positive finish across the seven trading days that have elapsed since the index notched its record peak.

Heading into the final hour of the session, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had added 508 points — a gain of roughly 1% — while broad participation across U.S. equities pushed the majority of shares higher. Selling pressure concentrated in AI-related equities pulled the Nasdaq composite back by 0.2%.

Trading had been noticeably more volatile in the hours before. Losses in AI-linked equities that took hold on Wall Street during Wednesday's session radiated across global markets, pulling South Korea's Kospi down by 7.6 percent and Japan's Nikkei 225 lower by 4.9 percent before the pressure carried into the opening of Thursday's trading on the S&P 500.

Corporate spending on artificial intelligence has climbed steadily, driven by expectations of stronger returns and gains in workforce output. Building out data centres and procuring AI chips carries substantial costs, and a number of firms have turned to debt financing to fund those purchases. Bond yields across international markets have reached multi-year highs, lifting borrowing costs and sharpening debate over how long the current global spending upturn can be sustained.

Debt taken on to fund infrastructure growth has become a common pattern across AI-linked firms, and analysts note that the resulting financial obligations are putting pressure on those companies' stock prices. Shares in CoreWeave, a cloud-based provider of AI computing infrastructure, dropped by as much as 9.5% in morning trading, extending a 15.5% retreat from the previous session. Filings revealed that principal repayments on the company's outstanding debt would total $4.41 billion across the back half of the current year, with a further $6.18 billion in such obligations falling due throughout 2027. Cash reserves stood above $5.5 billion at the close of June 30.

When bond yields climb, the appetite among investors for richly priced equities — particularly those trading at a premium — tends to soften. Nvidia's stock edged down 1.7 percent — a move modest in percentage terms yet weighty enough in the chipmaker's overall market value, built on AI hardware orders, to pull the broader S&P 500 index further into negative territory than any other single component managed. Heading into that session, its cumulative advance from the close of 2022 stood at roughly 1,415 percent.

Throughout the trading session, selling pressure on AI-related equities eased, giving broader U.S. market indexes room to find their footing. Shares of CoreWeave climbed into positive territory, sitting at a gain of 4.4% at the latest reading. Roughly seven in ten constituents of the S&P 500 posted gains, with equities outside the artificial intelligence space holding their ground.

Quarterly earnings at Marsh & McLennan cleared the bar set by analyst forecasts, sending the insurance and professional services firm's stock climbing toward the upper end of the broader market. Quarterly figures beat analyst expectations, while the company's stock — trading under the Marsh banner since a rebranding earlier this year — climbed 5 percent in the wake of those numbers. Profit forecasts heading into the current reporting period point upward across a broad range of industries.

Across Treasury markets, yields on government bonds retreated. Benchmark rates on 10-year Treasury notes eased to 5.08% from the 5.19% level recorded the prior Wednesday evening. Yields on the instrument had climbed above 5.30% at one point during the month, reaching a level not seen since 2002, driven by persistent inflation worries, evidence of a resilient domestic economy, and a range of additional pressures.

Bond yields retreated despite a separate data release showing that consumer prices in the United States had risen by a margin exceeding what analysts had forecast. A handful of economic indicators for the U.S. came in ahead of forecasts. Separate figures on consumer spending showed nationwide retail activity outpacing forecasts the previous month, and a parallel count of workers lodging fresh unemployment claims during the latest reporting week landed under the threshold analysts had anticipated.

The Kospi index in South Korea recorded a single-session decline not seen in overseas trading since the prior July. Since peaking at a record in June, the value has retreated by 39 percent. Two semiconductor firms — Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix — hold an outsized share of the Kospi's overall weighting.

European indices posted gains, with their portfolio mix weighted less heavily toward technology companies than counterparts elsewhere. The FTSE 100 index in London posted a gain of 1.1 per cent on the day.