Alphabet surpasses Apple for first time in over six years… Three major indices mixed [New York Stock Market Briefing]

The three major U.S. stock indices closed mixed.

Tech stocks held up strongly, but selling emerged across the board in the afternoon, giving the market a breather. Even so, Alphabet overtook Apple to become the second-largest company by market capitalization. This is the first time Alphabet's market cap has exceeded Apple's since 2019.

On the 7th (local time) at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 48,996.08, down 466 points (0.94%). The S&P 500 index closed at 6,920.93, down 23.89 points (0.34%), and the Nasdaq Composite Index finished at 23,584.27, up 37.10 points (0.16%).

The three major indices were jointly strong in early trading.

The S&P 500 and the Dow set intraday record highs again that day. But after consecutive days of gains, investors appeared fatigued and concerned about high levels, and in the afternoon selling poured in across all sectors except technology and health care, causing the Dow and the S&P 500 to turn negative.

At CES 2026, with 'physical AI'—combining robotics and AI—emerging as a hot topic, buying interest had flowed evenly into downstream industries over the past few days, but they fell amid the market’s breather that day.

Despite weakness in cyclical stocks, Alphabet surpassed Apple in market capitalization to take the No. 2 spot. Alphabet's market cap was $3.89 trillion based on the closing price, exceeding Apple's $3.85 trillion.

Google has begun to play a central role in the AI ecosystem with tensor processing units (TPUs), and its AI tool Gemini has also shown outstanding performance, prompting the market to reassess Alphabet. Alphabet's stock rose 65% last year, the largest annual increase since 2009.

By sector, industrials, financials, energy, materials, consumer staples, and real estate fell more than 1%, while utilities plunged 2.46%.

U.S. President Donald Trump pressured defense contractors and real estate investment companies, applying downward pressure on related stocks.

Trump said that "defense contractors are currently paying massive dividends to shareholders and buying back large amounts of their own stock while neglecting plant and equipment investment, and this situation will no longer be tolerated," adding that he would ban dividends and share buybacks. On that news, Lockheed Martin fell 4.82% and RTX dropped 2.45%.

Also, after Trump said he is "taking immediate action to ban large institutional investors from purchasing additional single-family homes," major private equity firms and real estate investment companies saw their shares tumble. Blackstone fell 5.57% and Apollo Global Management also dropped 5.51%.

Shin Min-kyung, Hankyung.com reporter radio@hankyung.com