Investing.com - Financial Markets Worldwide
Get 40% Off
Get 40% Off
⚠ Earnings Alert! Which stocks are poised to surge?
See the stocks on our ProPicks radar. These strategies gained 19.7% year-to-date.
Unlock full list

Wall St. falls as trade anxieties spike

Published 05/17/2019, 04:37 PM
Updated 05/17/2019, 04:37 PM
© Reuters. Traders work on the floor at the NYSE in New York

By Stephen Culp

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street ended lower on Friday as continuing trade tensions pulled industrial and tech shares down, and the Dow capped a fourth straight week of losses in its longest weekly losing streak in three years.

While all three major U.S. indexes struggled for direction for much of the session, they turned decisively negative following a report from CNBC that U.S.-China trade negotiations have stalled.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq suffered their second successive weekly declines after U.S. stocks failed to fully recover from Monday's steep sell-off.

"It is not unusual for stocks to weaken at the end of a week," said Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment Counsel in Charlottesville, Virginia. "The possibility of something weird happening over the weekend leads people to take money off the table as the week comes to a close."

China added fuel to the fire of the increasingly rancorous trade war with the United States, striking a more aggressive tone and suggesting further talks could be fruitless unless Washington changes course.

Elsewhere in the multi-front U.S. tariff war, President Donald Trump confirmed he would delay imposing imported auto tariffs by as much as six months, and agreed to lift metal tariffs on Canada and Mexico.

Trade headlines overshadowed upbeat economic data. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index jumped 5.3% in May to its highest reading in 15 years.

"After earnings season the market seems to shift to these macro factors that are difficult to predict and difficult to trade on," Tuz added. "You see more whipsawing in the markets in this kind of environment."

Tariff jitters also dragged on key industrial shares.

Farm equipment maker Deere & Co was the biggest percentage loser on the S&P 500, dipping 7.7% after cutting its full-year forecast.

Caterpillar Inc (NYSE:CAT), 3M (NYSE:MMM) Co, Textron (NYSE:TXT), General Dynamics (NYSE:GD) and Fedex Corp all helped pull the industrial sector 1.1% lower.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 98.68 points, or 0.38%, to 25,764, the S&P 500 lost 16.79 points, or 0.58%, to 2,859.53 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 81.76 points, or 1.04%, to 7,816.29.

Of the 11 major sectors in the S&P 500, all but utilities closed in the red, with industrials and energy seeing the largest percentage losses.

With 460 of S&P 500 companies having posted first-quarter results, 75.2% of which beat analyst expectations, the mostly upbeat first-quarter earnings season is nearly complete.

Analysts now expect first-quarter earnings growth of 1.4%, a significant turnaround from the 2% loss expected on April 1.

Active wear company Under Armour Inc (NYSE:UAA) gained 7.8% following JP Morgan's upgrade of the stock to "overweight."

Pinterest (NYSE:PINS) Inc slumped 13.5% after its first quarterly earnings report as a publicly-traded company.

Shares of Luckin Coffee Inc jumped 19.9% as the Chinese challenger to Starbucks Corp (NASDAQ:SBUX) made its debut.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 2.96-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.52-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 33 new 52-week highs and 6 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 55 new highs and 101 new lows.

© Reuters. Traders work on the floor at the NYSE in New York

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 6.71 billion shares, compared to the 6.98 billion average over the last 20 trading days.

Latest comments

What Goes Up Must Come Down ! As Long As Mother
Donnie with his China bashing... fact is trade war is a lose lose game, for US included. While it feels good to blame & demonize China for virtually all alleged intellectual theft, truth is all companies including US companies extract intellectual properties from each other. Just look at IP lawsuits around. By the way Huawei is leader in a number of areas including 5G. They can't be leading if, according to the false emotionally misguided narratives, the only thing China does is copying!
So they recalculated their earnings growth numbers after 460 out of 500 companies reported. Got it.
Leith Financial Investment Group will still make money during the volatility we make money on the way up and down
And anyone who thinks this "trade war" is really about trade is nuts. It is all about what the Chinese are turning their dollars into. Aircraft Carriers, Hypersonic misses, and Stelth Jets. All those items are being created for their Number 1 trading partner.
It doesn't matter who the perceived winner or loser turns out to be. At the end of the day it is just another TAX on the American people. We all know those never go away. Was this one done under the Congress?
China can”t win trade war with US. Trump is in the right path in asking to have balance of trade and calling for china to put regulations in place to protect intellectual properties. Haveing mass production in place and dumping good in other countries thereby destroying local business resulting in high unemplyment should not be acceptable. Citizen of every country have the right to employment and live life with diginity.
Citizens also have the right to bring value to the market. We don't need more sweatshops: we need more skilled labor and creative businesses solving problems in new and more effective/efficient ways. That will improve everyone's standard of living. Not force the tax base into subsidizing the construction of a bunch of factories thst will pay dirt to a bunch of workers that will have to be subsidized, too. That's not value-added.
China will win the battle, astrologically talking bad moon rising (Jupiter transit) for Trump incoming...
Why the USA always try to protect their own interests? Maybe we start to think about other countries like China and stop to play an aggressive game against them?
why does china always try to protect their own interests and plays an unfair game?
sure educate yourself on the position before you try to label United States as aggressive. theft of intellectual property to be used by state-run companies producing similar products then ousting the company from their country so that they can produce stolen technology? this is been a long time coming
I do not understand why Wall Street reacts to anything Trump has to say (Tweet). It is all highly exaggerated. China is tired of being misrepresented in these talks and is about to show us just that. I'm short this market in the near term.
because Wall Street is the home of a bunch of weaks named traders.
under Trump the stock market has held the longest bull market in history, that is a fact. please, go ahead and short it all you like. I'll short Chinese stocks.
that's Obama dude. 90 months bull run before conman took over
Is China the only country that should be allowed to protect their interests?
umm nope
Nobody wants to talk about the market manipulations brought forth by the global banks. Everybody knows that it exists, but nobody knows to what degree it prevails.So, we simply talk about the news that is in plain sight, and not cloaked in secrecy.It keeps our attention side-tracked with distraction. - At least until someone notices that market behavior doesn't seem to correlate with world news.There is a new game being played on an old playing board. Nobody knows the rules, but everybody seeks to win.I'll offer this suggestion to whomever has ears to hear it: Invest only what you can afford to lose, and can live without. Those, who invest on borrowed money, do so in a predictable manner, because they cannot afford to lose. It is this weakness that is used against you. Greediness is predictable by the greedier. Thus, the players with less money, become the losers.Those who adhere to a simple, humble strategy, become the winners.If this resembles gibberish to you, simply ignore.
Everything you said I read in "The Alchemist" ages ago. The new truth is that buy and hold is dead and that as we are in the throes of the end of this civilization and the dawn of a new one, paper assets are a fool's errand. Learn to trade, accumulate paper assets, and then trade them again for real assets. Land, education, and skilled labor will have value in any society.
Why are investors so concerned about blostery words written or tweeted. Need to look at the real economics not mindless posturing words.
Fair enough: real economics is that the stock rally is built on expatriated funds that have been leveraged to reduce the size of the market through share buybacks. As a result companies have gotten away with middling to poor true production and growth throughout this "jobless recovery" because by spending money on reducing share count, and then reducing capex (which is what is needed for real actualizable GDP growth) they get "better" EPS and EBITDA results. Which speculators, that think they're investors, lap up because they're speculating for longer periods of time and only concerned with the numbers in their funny money accounts going up. And for all the muppets that will point to the jobs growth the past couple years, I'll point them to the timing of labor laws and policies prior to the jobs surge along with Fed policy: namely the increase in the cost of loans needed to fuel special dividends and share buybacks. Somebody has to work to pay the interest.
So let me get this straight. Trump says he might delay auto tariffs in Europe for a few more months and we shoot up like a rocket for 2-3 solid days. Now, a Chinese news paper says something mean and we tank... Yeah ok sure...
I think people just dont want to hold over the weekend which is when trump usually tweets something crazy
Install Our App
Risk Disclosure: Trading in financial instruments and/or cryptocurrencies involves high risks including the risk of losing some, or all, of your investment amount, and may not be suitable for all investors. Prices of cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile and may be affected by external factors such as financial, regulatory or political events. Trading on margin increases the financial risks.
Before deciding to trade in financial instrument or cryptocurrencies you should be fully informed of the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience, and risk appetite, and seek professional advice where needed.
Fusion Media would like to remind you that the data contained in this website is not necessarily real-time nor accurate. The data and prices on the website are not necessarily provided by any market or exchange, but may be provided by market makers, and so prices may not be accurate and may differ from the actual price at any given market, meaning prices are indicative and not appropriate for trading purposes. Fusion Media and any provider of the data contained in this website will not accept liability for any loss or damage as a result of your trading, or your reliance on the information contained within this website.
It is prohibited to use, store, reproduce, display, modify, transmit or distribute the data contained in this website without the explicit prior written permission of Fusion Media and/or the data provider. All intellectual property rights are reserved by the providers and/or the exchange providing the data contained in this website.
Fusion Media may be compensated by the advertisers that appear on the website, based on your interaction with the advertisements or advertisers.
© 2007-2024 - Fusion Media Limited. All Rights Reserved.