S&P 500 inches higher as speculative stocks get crushed

US stocks inched higher on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 up and the Nasdaq 100 treading water while the Russell 2000 retreated.

Most S&P 500 sector ETFs rose, with the exception of communication services, tech, and utilities.

Semi stocks slumped, with Advanced Micro Devices a notable decliner after a double downgrade by HSBC.

Oil majors Exxon and Shell retreated after warning that their quarterly earnings would be lower than previously anticipated.

Quantum-computing stocks faced intense selling pressure after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggested that it would take two decades before they were very useful. Rigetti Computing, IonQ, D-Wave Quantum, and Quantum Computing were all slammed.

Other high-flying, thematically oriented stocks like Cerence and SoundHound AI got hammered, as did heavily shorted companies like Plug Power.

Edison International, which operates a California-based utility, suffered its largest one-day decline since March 2020 as wildfires ravage the state. The stock was the worst performer in the S&P 500.

On the other end of the spectrum, eBay was the best-performing member of the benchmark US stock gauge as Meta begins to test allowing users to browse eBay listings on Facebook Marketplace in order to help remedy some antitrust concerns.