Tuesday, July 29, 2025 - (AP) — Wall Street’s record-breaking, weeklong run ran out of momentum on Tuesday.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.3% for its first drop after
closing at an all-time high in six successive days. The Dow Jones Industrial
Average sank 204 points, or 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite shaved 0.4% off its
own record.
SoFi Technologies climbed 6.6%, but Merck dropped 1.7% and
UPS sank 10.6% following a torrent of profit reports from big U.S. companies.
They’re among the hundreds of companies telling investors this week how much
they made during the spring, including nearly a third of the stocks in the
S&P 500 index.
Treasury yields eased in the bond market as the Federal
Reserve began a two-day meeting where they will decide what to do with
short-term interest rates.
Despite angry lobbying from President Donald Trump for lower
rates, which would give the economy a boost, the widespread expectation is that
the Fed will wait for more data about how Trump’s tariffs are affecting
inflation and the economy before making its next move.
The U.S. economy has seemed to hold up OK so far despite the
pressures of tariffs, though it does appear to be slowing. One report on
Tuesday said that U.S. employers were advertising fewer job openings at the end
of June than a month before, though still more than economists expected. A
separate report said confidence rose among U.S. consumers, but a measure of
their expectations about the near term remains below the level that typically
signals a recession ahead.
“Consumer confidence has stabilized since May, rebounding
from April’s plunge, but remains below last year’s heady levels,” according to
Stephanie Guichard, senior economist, global indicators, at The Conference
Board.
Wall Street had a relatively muted reaction after China’s
top trade official said that China and the United States have agreed to work on
extending a deadline for new tariffs on each other. Trade officials from the
world’s two largest economies had been talking in Stockholm ahead of an Aug. 12
deadline, after which much higher tariffs are scheduled to resume.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, though, said that
U.S. officials would head back to Washington and “talk to the president about
whether that’s something that he wants to do,” meaning an extension in the
pause in tariffs.
Later this week, another deadline is looming on Friday for
many of Trump’s proposed tariffs on other countries. Several highly anticipated
economic reports are also on the way, including the latest monthly update on
the job market.
The jam-packed week could prove pivotal in determining
whether the U.S. stock market can keep climbing to more records or succumb to
criticism that it’s grown too expensive following its dramatic leap in recent
months.
One way companies can tamp down such criticism is to deliver
solid growth in profits.
That helped Cadence Design Systems, whose stock came into
the day with a gain of 11.1% for the year so far. The computational software
company said it’s continuing to benefit from the flood of investment into the
artificial-intelligence industry, and it raised its forecast for revenue growth
this year. Its stock rallied 9.7%.
But investors have also been punishing stocks of companies
that have failed to meet expectations so far this reporting season.
UnitedHealth Group dropped 7.5% after reporting a profit for
the spring that fell short of analysts’ expectations. It also gave a forecast
for profit over all of 2025 that investors found disappointing. The health care
giant said it expected to earn at least $16 per share, when analysts were
looking for something close to $20, according to FactSet.
Shares of Novo Nordisk that trade in the United States
tumbled 21.8% after the Danish company cut its forecast for sales growth this
year, in part because of lower expectations for its Wegovy weight-loss drug
amid high competition. It also named a new chief executive officer.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 18.91 points to 6,370.86. The
Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 204.57 to 44,632.99, and the Nasdaq
composite gave up 80.29 to 21,098.29.
In stock markets abroad, Japan’s Nikkei fell 0.8%, but
indexes elsewhere rose across much of Asia and Europe.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury
dropped to 4.32% from 4.42% late Monday.
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