Disappointing US economic data weighs on stocks

Bad economic news was bad news for stocks, which slumped to their lows of the day after the ISM Services Index came in at 50.1 in July, while economists had been looking for a reading of 51.5.

Major indexes clawed back some of their losses but still ended mostly in the red, with the S&P 500 off 0.5% and the Nasdaq 100 down 0.7%, while the Russell 2000 bucked the trend with a 0.6% advance.

Most S&P sector ETFs fell on the day, with utilities leading the way down.

Axon shares jumped 16%, leading S&P 500 gains, after the law enforcement equipment maker reported much better-than-expected Q2 earnings and sales after the close Monday. Leading decliners was Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which sank 20% despite posting a second-quarter earnings beat after the company said it would stop development of one of its next-generation pain medicines.

Elsewhere...

Pfizer jumped 5% after the drugmaker reported earnings results that beat Wall Street’s Q2 expectations and raised its full-year outlook.

Shares of Core Scientific were up 3% after a report from the Financial Times saying some of the company’s “top shareholders” are crying foul over the terms of its all-stock takeover by CoreWeave and are planning to vote against the deal. CoreWeave shares were up 5.5%.

Navitas Semiconductor, the tiny chipmaker that went parabolic in late May after earning a spot in Nvidia’s supply chain, tumbled 16% after reporting Q2 results.

Shares of CRISPR Therapeutics slid 6.7% after the Swiss biotech missed Wall Street’s Q2 expectations, despite growing excitement around its flagship gene-editing therapy.

Coinbase shares fell 6.3% after the largest US crypto exchange suffered an outage on Base, its ethereum layer 2 network, and halted operations for 29 minutes due to an “unsafe head delay.”

Yum! Brands shares fell 5% after the KFC and Taco Bell parent reported lower-than-expected Q2 results amid a slowdown in consumer spending at its key US franchises.