Quiet day after a stormy week on Wall Street

US stocks drifted on Tuesday through a rare quiet day for financial markets.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.2 per cent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 155 points, or 0.4 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite edged down by less than 0.1 per cent.

The modest moves offered some respite following the huge swings that have battered Wall Street recently, not just day-to-day, but also hour to hour. The day before, the S&P 500 went from a gain of 1.8 per cent to a slight loss and back to a gain as it struggled to keep up with shifts in President Donald Trump’s trade war, which economists warn could cause a global recession unless it’s scaled back.

Perhaps more importantly, the US bond market also showed more signs of calm after its sudden and sharp moves last week raised worries that investors worldwide may no longer see US government bonds as a no-brainer go-to when times are scary.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.33 per cent from 4.38 per cent late Monday. It had pulled back to there from 4.48 per cent at the end of last week after surging from just 4.01 per cent a week earlier. A drop in yields is what usually happens when investors are scared, and this week’s moves offer a return to form for what historically had been seen as one of the safest investments possible.

The value of the US dollar also steadied after tumbling last week, which had raised more worries that Trump’s trade war was degrading its status as a safe-haven investment, as with US Treasury bonds. The dollar’s value ticked higher against the euro and Swiss franc, though it slipped against the British pound.

On Wall Street, Albertsons’ stock fell 7.6 per cent despite reporting a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The company behind Safeway, Vons and other grocery stores gave a forecast for profit in the upcoming year that was short of analysts’.

DaVita sank 3.0 per cent for a second straight drop after it said a ransomware attack is affecting some of its operations. The healthcare company said it’s still investigating the attack, which it learnt about on Saturday, and that it can’t yet know the “full scope, nature, and potential ultimate impact”.

On the winning side of Wall Street was Bank of America, which climbed 3.6 per cent after the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

Most big US banks have been reporting strong results for the start of the year, boosted by their stock trading desks taking advantage of all the huge swings caused by Trump’s on-again-off-again tariff announcements. Citigroup also topped analysts’ expectations, and its stock rose 1.8 per cent.

Palantir Technologies climbed 6.2 per cent for a second day of gains after NATO said it would use the company’s artificial-intelligence capabilities in its allied command operations.

All told, the S&P 500 slipped 9.34 points to 5,396.63. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 155.83 to 40,368.96, and the Nasdaq composite edged down by 8.32 to 16,823.17.

Even with the market’s modest moves on Tuesday, worries continue about the trade war. The United States and China, the world’s two largest economies, have been announcing ever-increasing tariffs on each other’s goods, along with other countermeasures to raise the stakes.

Trump has said he wants to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States, and he also wants to trim how much more his country exports to other countries than it imports.

China’s leadership, meanwhile, has been trying to present itself as a source of “stability and certainty” as it visits countries across Southeast Asia this week.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia. Germany’s DAX returned 1.4 per cent, and the FTSE 100 in London climbed 1.4 per cent.

Automakers helped drive indexes higher in Asia, where Japan’s Nikkei 225 added 0.8 per cent and South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.9 per cent.

Chinese stocks wobbled, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rising 0.2 per cent after fluctuating much of the day. Stocks in Shanghai added 0.1 per cent.

AP