NEW YORK — Wall Street’s record-breaking, weeklong run ran out of momentum on Tuesday.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.3 per cent for its first drop after closing at an all-time high in six successive days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 204 points, or 0.5 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite shaved 0.4 per cent off its own record.
SoFi Technologies climbed 6.6 per cent, but Merck dropped 1.7 per cent and UPS sank 10.6 per cent following a torrent of profit reports from big U.S. companies. They’re among the hundreds of companies telling investors this week how much they made during the spring, including nearly a third of the stocks in the S&P 500 index.
Treasury yields eased in the bond market as the Federal Reserve began a two-day meeting where they will decide what to do with short-term interest rates.
Despite angry lobbying from President Donald Trump for lower rates, which would give the economy a boost, the widespread expectation is that the Fed will wait for more data about how Trump’s tariffs are affecting inflation and the economy before making its next move.
The U.S. economy has seemed to hold up OK so far despite the pressures of tariffs, though it does appear to be slowing. One report on Tuesday said that U.S. employers were advertising fewer job openings at the end of June than a month before, though still more than economists expected. A separate report said confidence rose among U.S. consumers, but a measure of their expectations about the near term remains below the level that typically signals a recession ahead.
“Consumer confidence has stabilized since May, rebounding from April’s plunge, but remains below last year’s heady levels,” according to Stephanie Guichard, senior economist, global indicators, at The Conference Board.
Wall Street had a relatively muted reaction after China’s top trade official said that China and the United States have agreed to work on extending a deadline for new tariffs on each other. Trade officials from the world’s two largest economies had been talking in Stockholm ahead of an Aug. 12 deadline, after which much higher tariffs are scheduled to resume.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, though, said that U.S. officials would head back to Washington and “talk to the president about whether that’s something that he wants to do,” meaning an extension in the pause in tariffs.
Later this week, another deadline is looming on Friday for many of Trump’s proposed tariffs on other countries. Several highly anticipated economic reports are also on the way, including the latest monthly update on the job market.
The jam-packed week could prove pivotal in determining whether the U.S. stock market can keep climbing to more records or succumb to criticism that it’s grown too expensive following its dramatic leap in recent months.
One way companies can tamp down such criticism is to deliver solid growth in profits.
That helped Cadence Design Systems, whose stock came into the day with a gain of 11.1 per cent for the year so far. The computational software company said it’s continuing to benefit from the flood of investment into the artificial-intelligence industry, and it raised its forecast for revenue growth this year. Its stock rallied 9.7 per cent.
But investors have also been punishing stocks of companies that have failed to meet expectations so far this reporting season.
UnitedHealth Group dropped 7.5 per cent after reporting a profit for the spring that fell short of analysts’ expectations. It also gave a forecast for profit over all of 2025 that investors found disappointing. The health care giant said it expected to earn at least US$16 per share, when analysts were looking for something close to US$20, according to FactSet.
Shares of Novo Nordisk that trade in the United States tumbled 21.8 per cent after the Danish company cut its forecast for sales growth this year, in part because of lower expectations for its Wegovy weight-loss drug amid high competition. It also named a new chief executive officer.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 18.91 points to 6,370.86. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 204.57 to 44,632.99, and the Nasdaq composite gave up 80.29 to 21,098.29.
In stock markets abroad, Japan’s Nikkei fell 0.8 per cent, but indexes elsewhere rose across much of Asia and Europe.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury dropped to 4.32 per cent from 4.42 per cent late Monday.
___
Stan Choe, The Associated Press
AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.