US equities opened the third quarter with a softer tone on Wednesday as investors weighed Federal Reserve commentary, fresh labour market signals and a burst of IPO activity, with sentiment shifting through the session rather than settling in one direction.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average edged below the flatline after closing at a record high in the prior session, while the S&P 500 fell 0.2% and the Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.6% as semiconductor names led declines.
Markets reacted to remarks from Kevin Warsh at an ECB forum in Portugal, where he offered no forward guidance on policy but reiterated his focus on price stability, noting that “prices are too high”, a comment that briefly added pressure before indices recovered from session lows.
Attention is now turning to Thursday’s US jobs report, brought forward due to the Fourth of July holiday, with investors already digesting weaker signals from private data, including ADP figures showing just 98,000 jobs added in June and Challenger, Gray & Christmas reporting just under 46,000 job cuts, slightly lower than a year earlier.
IPO activity provided a contrasting theme in the session, with Italian software acquirer Bending Spoons surging more than 30% on its Nasdaq debut under ticker BSP, opening at $31 versus a $29 IPO price and briefly trading above $40, pushing its valuation beyond $20 billion as it continues to build a portfolio that includes AOL, Vimeo, WeTransfer and Evernote.
Chief executive Luca Ferrari described the approach as rebuilding acquired platforms from the ground up.
Electric mobility firm Lime also made a steady public debut, opening at $27 after pricing its IPO at $25 and raising about $167 million through the sale of nearly 7 million shares, with chief executive Wayne Ting pointing to three years of positive free cash flow and 29% revenue growth in 2025 as justification for tapping public markets.
In technology, Meta gained more than 9% after reports it plans to sell computing capacity to third parties, potentially operating in a model similar to cloud providers such as AWS and Azure, positioning its data centres as external infrastructure for AI workloads and developer access.
The broader cloud backdrop also drew attention to Amazon, with market commentary suggesting the group could become the first company to reach $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2028, supported by its expanding footprint across commerce, logistics, advertising and cloud services.
