Investing.com -- Wall Street fell on Tuesday as worries over the impact on earnings from the U.S.-China trade dispute and receding hopes for a big, near-term interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve weighed on sentiment.
The S&P 500 was down 7 points or 0.3% by 9:39 AM ET (13:39 GMT). The Dow lost 85 points or 0.3% and the Nasdaq composite slipped down 9 points or 0.1%.
Investors are focused this week on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who is scheduled to testify before Congress on Wednesday and Thursday. Chances of aggressive rate cuts fell last week after a robust jobs report.
PepsiCo (NASDAQ:PEP) was flat despite its earnings beat estimates - a strong performance at home offset a sharp drop in earnings in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) gained 0.5% after announcing its intention to buy Acacia Communications for $2.6 billion, a premium of nearly 50% to last night’s close.
3M (NYSE:MMM) fell 1.7% after RBC Capital Markets downgraded the company to “sector perform,” citing macro pressures from China.
Overnight, German-based chemicals company BASF had driven European markets lower with a warning that its 2019 earnings before interest and taxes could fall as much as 30% due to the impact of a U.S.-China trade war, for which it said there was no end in sight.
Most semiconductor companies were down, with Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) slipping 1.2% and NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) falling 0.8%. Micron (NASDAQ:MU) gained 1.1%.
In commodities, crude oil slipped 0.1% to $57.63 a barrel. Gold futures fell 0.5% to $1,393.65 a troy ounce, while the U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, was up 0.1% to 97.078.