US stocks struggle for direction amid conflicting earnings reports
The S&P 500 finished Tuesday with a modest 0.1% loss. The Nasdaq 100 climbed 0.1%. The Russell 2000, which tracks small caps, dropped 0.4%.
Treasury yields moved little and 10-year bond yields hovered around 4.2% after having risen 11 basis points on Monday. Traders are now betting on a 8.9% chance of no rate cut at all during the Federal Reserve’s next meeting. Oil futures gained for the second session this week, recouping some of last week’s losses. Gold climbed.
Sector performance was mixed. Consumer staples advanced the most by 0.6%, primarily driven by Philip Morris International’s 10.5% jump after delivering an upbeat earnings report. Stock of Philip Morris finished Tuesday as the top S&P 500 gainer.
The industrial select sector, however, lost 1.2% and was the biggest laggard. It was dragged down by GE Aerospace, which had its worst daily performance in over two years following a quarterly report that fell short of Wall Street’s expectations.
In other corporate news, GM was the second-best-performing S&P 500 constituent, up 9.8%. On the other hand, Genuine Parts Co. plunged a whopping 21% after an awful quarter.
