US equities fell on Tue, after Walmart (WMT US, -7.6%) cut its quarterly and full-year profit estimates. Walmart’s forecast increased broad concerns that US consumer spending may not remain strong enough to keep the economy out of a recession.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 228.50 pts or 0.71% to close at 31,761.54. The broader S&P 500 index fell 1.15%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite retreated 1.87%.
The small cap Russell 2000 dropped 0.69%. Megacap tech stocks fell on Tue, including Apple (AAPL US, -0.88%), Microsoft (MSFT US, -2.68%), Amazon (AMZN US, -5.23%), Alphabet (GOOGL US, - 2.32%), NVidia (NVDA US, -2.88%), and Meta Platforms (META US, -4.5%).
Microsoft gained 4.0% in extended-hours trading even as the company reported earnings that missed Wall Street’s estimates. Microsoft gave a positive outlook.
Alphabet reported 2Q22 revenue that met analysts’ expectations. Its shares are up 4.9% in after-hours trade on Tue.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note notched up 1.09 basis points (bps) to 2.8068%, while the yield on the 2-year Treasuries rose 3.67 bps to 3.0528%.
The front-month Brent and WTI futures closed down 75 cents at US$104.40/bbl and $1.72 at US$94.98/bbl respectively.
The ICE dollar index (DXY), which measures the strength of the greenback against a basket of currencies, rose 0.66% to 107.189.
The most actively traded US gold futures (Aug) contracts settled down $1.40, or 0.1%, at US$1,717.70/oz. September silver, which is the most actively traded silver futures, rose 20.7 cents, or 1.1%, to end at US$18.535/oz.
European equity markets finished mixed on Tue. While the UK FTSE closed nearly flat, France's CAC 40 fell 0.42% and the German DAX retreated 0.86%.
UBS (UBSG SW, -9.47%) posted a smaller-than-expected 2Q22 profit as turmoil in financial markets hurt its investment banking.