New York: US stocks reversed early gains to end sharply lower as Wall Street continued to assess the impacts of global trade tensions. The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Tuesday rose 204.96 points, or 0.85 per cent, to 24,407.56. The S&P 500 increased 13.05 points, or 0.49 per cent, to 2,671.60, Xinhua news agency reported.
The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 12.96 points, or 0.18 per cent, to 7,233.50. The market soared on Monday, with all three major indices on the Wall Street witnessing their best percentage daily gains since 2015 as trade tensions between the US and China appeared to ease. Trade concerns appeared to abate even more after Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s comments on Monday.
“There is no winner in a trade war,” Li said, calling for a rational and earnest attitude when addressing the problem of China-US trade imbalance. Li urged the international community to jointly safeguard the multilateral trading system with free trade as its cornerstone, and oppose protectionism and unilateralism. However, a sharp decline in tech shares, leading by Facebook, dented investor sentiment.
Shares of Facebook tumbled 4.90 per cent to $152.22 apiece after Bank of America Merrill Lynch reduced its price target on the social media network for the second time in five days. The tech sector dropped 3.47 per cent on Tuesday as the biggest laggard among the S&P 500’s 11 sectors. On the economic front, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller US National Home Price NSA Index reported a 6.2-per cent annual gain in January, down from 6.3 per cent in the previous month. Meanwhile, the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index registered 127.7 in March, down from 130 in the previous month.
