U.S. Stocks Fail To Hold Gains, Settle Flat; Nasdaq, S&P 500 Post New Highs
U.S. stocks failed to hold gains and ended flat on Tuesday as investors turned cautious and largely refrained from holding positions at higher levels as they looked ahead to crucial jobs data, due later in the week.
Uncertainty about the pace of global economic recovery due to a surge in the delta variant of Covid-19 and fresh curbs on travel in several countries, including Spain, Portugal and Germany, weighed on sentiment.
Among the major averages, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 climbed fresh peak, and recorded new closing highs, while the Dow, which opened on a firm note, rebounding from losses in the previous session, ended with a small gain.
The Dow, which rose to 34,469.83, ended the day with a gain of 9.02 points or 0.03 percent at 34,292.29. The S&P 500 climbed to 4,300.52 and settled at 4,291.90, gaining 1.19 points or 0.03 percent, while the Nasdaq ended up by 27.83 points or 0.19 percent at 14,528.33, slightly off a new high of 14,535.97.
Nike, Travelers Companies, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Apple and Home Depot gained 1 to 2.5 percent. Visa, Microsoft and Amgen posted modest gains.
Morgan Stanley gained more than 3 percent after raising its dividend by 100 percent, and announced a $50 million share buyback program.
Boeing shares ended 1.7 percent down, extending losses from the previous session. Walt Disney and Intel also ended notably lower.
In economic news, the Conference Board said Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence index for June came in with a reading of 127.3, the highest reading since the last pre-pandemic reading of 132.6 in February 2020, and up from a revised reading of 120.0 in May 2021.
The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city home price index in the US increased by 14.9 percent in April 2021, following a revised 13.4 percent growth in the previous month and beating market expectations of 14.5 percent.
In overseas trading, the major European markets closed modestly higher on Tuesday as investors looked ahead to some crucial economic data, including U.S. non-farm payrolls jobs data, and reacted positively to data showing a jump in eurozone economic sentiment in the month of June.
The pan European Stoxx 600 gained 0.31%. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 climbed 0.21% and Germany’s DAX surged up 0.88%, while France’s CAC 40 and Switzerland’s SMI edged up 0.14% and 0.16%, respectively.
Asian stocks ended lower on Tuesday, as outbreaks of the highly contagious Covid-19 variant Delta and reports of new travel curbs in some parts of the world raised concerns about a hindrance to global economic recovery.
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