Wall Street ends mixed as banks and energy weigh
STORY: Wall Street's main indexes closed with mixed results on Tuesday, as bank and energy stocks weighed while Oracle helped boost the AI trade.
The Dow dipped about two-tenths of a percent, the S&P 500 gained almost half a percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq added more than eight-tenths of a percent.
Energy was the biggest percentage decliner among the S&P's 11 sectors, losing about 2%, as crude oil futures fell after OPEC+ cut its 2024 and 2025 demand forecast.
Bank stocks fell broadly after Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said late Monday that trading revenue could fall 10% this quarter.
That was followed Tuesday by JPMorgan Chase's tempered expectations about income from interest payments.
Uncertainty about the Federal Reserve's decision on interest rates next week also fueled investor anxiety.
Still, Zach Hill, head of portfolio management at Horizon Investments, believes that Wednesday's Consumer Price Index, with the latest inflation data, will be something of a non-event.
"This is the least impactful inflation report in over two years, maybe even three at this point. You know, really don't think that the Fed is that keyed in on month-over-month inflation reports like they were, you know, in 2022 and 2023. Their main focus is on the labor market. We already got, you know, the most high-profile release of that last week and it confirmed kind of what everybody already knows - that the labor market slowing down and it's time for the Fed to start cutting interest rates. And so we really don't think, you know, outside of maybe a little bit of position adjustments right after the number is released, we really don't think it's going to make a meaningful difference to the interest rate and policy backdrop."
In other stock moves, shares of Oracle rallied about 11 and a half percent, making it the S&P 500's biggest gainer, after the software company beat estimates for quarterly results.
On the flip side, Hewlett Packard Enterprise was the S&P 500's biggest decliner on Tuesday - falling 8 and a half percent after the server maker announced a $1.35 billion mandatory convertible preferred stock offering to fund its acquisition of Juniper Networks.
Finally, economic policy from the two presidential candidates was in focus ahead of the first debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump.