US: Stocks dip as markets monitor trade war fallout

[NEW YORK] Wall Street stocks finished lower on Tuesday (Apr 15) following news of solid bank earnings as investors monitor developments in the US-China trade war after last week market gyrations.

“It’s quiet,” said Adam Sarhan of 50 Park Investments. “Right now, you have a situation of digestion or the market consolidating a lot of volatility over the last few weeks.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 0.4 per cent lower at 40,368.96.

The broad-based S&P 500 declined 0.2 per cent to 5,396.63 while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 0.1 per cent to 16,823.17.

A White House spokesperson described the ball as being “in China’s court” in the trade war between Washington and Beijing.

Investors welcomed a calmer US Treasury market after last week’s spike in US Treasury bond yields. But there is still a lot of uncertainty among market participants.

“Will we have relief or progress with the trade tariff situation or is the situation going to get worse?” Sarhan said. “We don’t know. That question mark is leading investors to hold off from taking any big positions.”

Among individual companies, Boeing dropped 2.4 per cent after a Bloomberg report that Beijing ordered Chinese airlines not to accept planes from the US aviation giant amid the US-China trade war. Boeing declined to comment.

Bank of America rose 3.6 per cent, while Citigroup gained 1.8 per cent as large lenders concluded a solid round of first-quarter earnings results.

Netflix surged 4.8 per cent following a Wall Street Journal report that said the streaming company is targeting a doubling of revenue by 2030. AFP