01:02 PM EDT, 05/22/2025 (MT Newswires) -- US equity indexes rose midday Thursday as most government bond yields slipped after the House voted in a budget reconciliation bill that will likely balloon the country's deficit by $2.3 trillion.
The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.6% to 18,985.2, the S&P 500 climbed 0.2% to 5,853.1, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 0.1% to 41,920.7. All sectors except communications services, technology, and consumer discretionary fell intraday. Utilities led the decliners.
Most Treasury yields fell intraday, with the 10-year down 3.6 basis points to 4.56% and the two-year 2.1 basis points lower at 4.00%. The duo touched a high of 4.63% and 4.02% earlier in the session. Crucially, the 30-year yield traded little changed at 5.07% after hitting a 52-week high of 5.16% earlier in the session.
The House voted in favor of the bill by a one-vote 215-214 margin Thursday morning, reflecting a deep divide along party lines, according to a note from Scotiabank. The bill includes tax cuts and increases to the SALT deduction cap, or federal deduction on state and local taxes. Its next hurdle is the Senate.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that the bill would add $2.3 trillion to the country's deficit over 10 years, the Washington Post reported.
"Overall, it [the bill] amounts to more debt, bigger structural deficits, unwise tax policy distortions and even at that it's not including up to half a trillion for Trump's 'Golden Dome' which means that the true deficit and debt projections would be considerably higher over time," Derek Holt, head of capital market economics, said in the note. "There is nothing substantive on infrastructure, it's all about funding tax cut extensions."
West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures retreated 0.8% to $61.09 a barrel.
In company news, the bill that House Republicans passed Thursday morning eliminated clean energy credits, according to media reports. Among the decliners after midday was Enphase (ENPH), whose shares sank 19% intraday, the worst performer on the S&P 500.
Seagate Technology ( STX ) said its board approved repurchasing up to $5 billion of shares, which rose 3.3% intraday, among the top performers on the S&P 500.
In economic news, US initial jobless claims fell to 227,000 in the week ended May 17 from 229,000 in the previous week, compared with expectations for an increase to 230,000 in surveys of analysts compiled by Bloomberg. Still, the four-week moving average rose by 1,000 to 231,500.
The pace of existing home sales slowed 0.5% to a 4 million seasonally adjusted annual rate in April from 4.02 million in March, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. The consensus was for 4.10 million in a Bloomberg-compiled survey. Sales were the slowest for an April reading since 2009.
The May flash reading of manufacturing conditions from S&P Global rose to a three-month high of 52.3, from 50.2 in April, compared with the 49.9 estimate in a survey compiled by Bloomberg. The index indicates expansion, unlike the Empire State and the Philadelphia Fed regional manufacturing readings that signaled contraction.