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August 27, 2026 · market close

Salesforce and Nvidia Carry Their Indexes While Most Stocks Fall Behind

A single stock powered the Dow's advance and a single stock powered nearly a third of the Nasdaq 100's, leaving breadth thin across the market.

The S&P 500 closed at 7,730.99, up 55.29 points, or 0.72%, on the day. Breadth was soft for a gain of that size: only 149 of the index's 501 members finished higher, meaning the advance rested on a small group of winners while most of the index slipped. The concentration figure backs that up, with the top contributors accounting for 136% of the index's net point move.

The S&P 500 through the session

Nvidia did the heavy lifting, adding 56.37 points on an 8.74% gain. Broadcom followed with 9.99 points and Microsoft added 8.76. CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks, up 20.5% and 12.83% respectively, contributed smaller but notable amounts. On the other side, Amazon was the largest drag at 5.52 points, with GE, Eli Lilly, Meta and Johnson & Johnson each subtracting a little more than a point.

S&P 500 attribution map, cell size = points contributed

The Dow

The DJIA closed at 53,569.00, up 105.12 points, or 0.2%. That headline number hides a breadth picture far weaker than the S&P's: only 6 of the Dow's 30 members finished higher. Concentration in the Dow ran to 417%, a sign that a small handful of names did all the work while the rest of the average leaned negative.

The Dow through the session

Salesforce was that work. It added 275.96 points on a 22.58% jump, dwarfing every other contributor in the index. Nvidia added another 108.89 points, IBM 53.02, Microsoft 51.65, and Apple a modest 6.72. Against that, McDonald's fell 2.57% and subtracted 40.83 points, Home Depot dropped 37.09, UnitedHealth 35.42, Caterpillar 29.30, and Visa 25.20. Without Salesforce and Nvidia, the Dow's session would have looked like a decline.

Dow attribution map, cell size = points contributed

The Nasdaq 100

The NASDAQ 100 closed at 29,641.56, up 417.04 points, or 1.43%, the standout of the three indexes today. Breadth was closer to even, with 51 of 101 members higher, and the move sits at the 89th percentile against the past year, which qualifies as a large move by that standard.

The Nasdaq 100 through the session

Nvidia's 8.74% gain translated into 275.82 index points here, the single largest driver of any index today. Broadcom added 47.21, Microsoft 40.15, CrowdStrike 24.57, and Tesla 22.09 on a 2.6% gain. The laggards were Amazon, down 1.54% and worth negative 26.98 points, followed by the two Alphabet share classes, which together subtracted 20.85 points. Walmart and Meta rounded out the bottom five.

Nasdaq 100 attribution map, cell size = points contributed

The sectors

The eleven sectors split sharply, with Technology the lone strong gainer and every other group in the red, led down by Consumer Staples, Health Care and Consumer Discretionary.

The 11 sectors by move, top contributor named

Technology rose 3.14%, or 5.74 points, with Nvidia as its top driver, adding 2.19 points on its 8.74% gain. It was the only sector to move meaningfully higher on the day.

Technology: what moved it

Consumer Staples was the weakest sector, down 1.36%, or 1.17 points. Costco led the decline, falling 2.24% and subtracting 0.17 points from the sector.

Consumer Staples: what moved it

Set against the past year, the S&P 500's move sits at the 82nd percentile and the Dow's at the 58th, neither large by the 85th-percentile threshold. The Nasdaq 100's 1.43% gain sits at the 89th percentile, the one move today that clears that bar.

The numbers

From Babylon Burns

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Compiled by the WMTMT attribution engine from the session's official data · built by the founders of Babylon Burns