Investing.com - Stocks struggled for most of the day, but ended with moderate gains on Tuesday, as trade tensions surfaced again and worries abounded about the health of the global economy.
The S&P 500 closed up 0.3% to 2,973.01, its second closing record in two days. The index fell just shy of setting a new 52-week high.
The Nasdaq Composite added 0.2%, and the Dow Jones industrials rose 0.3%.
The trade disputes came alive again when President Donald Trump said a China-U.S. trade deal should be a bit "tilted" toward the United States. Then, the White House said it might impose $4 billion in new tariffs on the European Union over the subsidies given to Airbus, the arch-rival of Boeing.
At the same time, crude oil prices fell more than 4% as traders became convinced crude output from U.S. shale formations could offset production cuts to the end of the year agreed to by OPEC and its allies.
All the developments seemed to offset the good feeling achieved at last week's G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan, especially when the United States and China agreed to restart trade talks.
WTI futures fell $2.84, or 4.8%, to $56.25. Brent futures fell 4.1% to $62.40. Crude's slump hit energy stocks. Seven of the 10 worst S&P 500 performers were oil-and-gas producers.
Interest rates moved lower, with the 10-year Treasury yield falling to 1.976%, below the 13-week Treasury yield of 2.148% and a signal of investor worries about the economy. Banks stocks were mostly lower, but big real-estate stocks moved higher in response.
Boeing (NYSE:BA) was the biggest drag on the Dow, off 0.6% and subtracting more than 20 points from the index. Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM), Chevron (NYSE:CVX) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) also were laggards.
Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ) and Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) were the Dow leaders. Cisco was also the second-best performer among Nasdaq 100 stocks. The index was up 0.4%.
The biggest techs, including Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Cisco and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) were higher.
The tensions won't go away Wednesday, but at least trading in the United States will close early for the July 4 holiday. Markets will be closed on Thursday with regular trading resuming on Friday.
S&P 500 Winners and Losers
Tech company Harris (NYSE:LHX), HCP (NYSE:HCP) and Welltower (NYSE:WELL), both healthcare-focused real estate investment trusts, were among the top S&P 500 performers.
Range Resources (NYSE:RRC), Acuity Brands Inc (NYSE:AYI) and Apache (NYSE:APA) were among the worst S&P 500 performers. Range and Apache are energy companies. Acuity makes lighting products and equipment.