Stocks waver to start the second half, Nvidia falls: Live updates

Stocks seesawed Monday as Wall Street struggled to maintain the strong momentum seen in the first half of 2024.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 56 points, or 0.1%, while the S&P 500 hovered near the flatline. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.6%.

Technology stocks Microsoft and Alphabet traded marginally higher. Artificial intelligence favorite Nvidia slipped roughly 3% and led the broader field of chip stocks including Broadcom, Qualcomm and AMD lower. Treasury yields soared, with the benchmark 10-year climbing more than 13 basis points to 4.473%.

Those moves follow continued excitement surrounding artificial intelligence that helped prop up stocks such as Nvidia, which led the S&P 500 to a 14.5% first-half gain. The Nasdaq Composite rallied 18.1% in the first half, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average underperformed due to a pullback in the second quarter, adding 3.8%.

For the second quarter, the S&P and Nasdaq added 3.9% and 8.3%, respectively, while the Dow lost 1.7%. The Nasdaq notched its third positive quarter in a row for the first time since a five-quarter streak ending in 2021.

Investors are still ever cognizant of a lack of market breadth that continues to plague the market and could influence moves into the second half of the year, according to Calamos Investments senior vice president and portfolio specialist Joseph Cusick. He noted that only ten stocks make up roughly 33% of the S&P 500's overall weight, which is a level of disproportion he says has only occurred three times in the past.

"The public and advisors are seeing and feeling this pressure of heightened risks," Cusick told CNBC. "The excuse in this cycle is that the nature of market dominance is not looking to be ebbing, but with markets right off