Stock Market News: Dow Set to Open Down
Stocks looked set to give up some of their gains from a stellar second quarter on Tuesday, as trade uncertainty and a flare-up in tensions between President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk took some steam out of the recent rally.
Futures tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 27 points, or 0.1%. S&P 500 futures slipped 0.1%, a day after the blue-chip index locked in its best quarter since the final three months of 2023, and contracts tied to the Nasdaq 100 fell 0.3% after the tech-heavy gauge notched its own best quarterly performance in half a decade.
While Wall Street appears to have got over the worst of its tariff jitters, investors are still nervous about the impact that the levies could have on the U.S. economy. Trump said Monday that he was preparing to send Japan a letter outlining a new tariff rate, as he accused the Asian nation of being unwilling to import American rice.
The feud between the president and Musk also started up again overnight. Musk said in a post on X that he would try to unseat members of Congress who pledged to cut government spending before endorsing Trump’s signature tax bill. Trump said in a response on his site Truth Social that the world’s richest man “may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far,” referring to government grants given to promote electric-vehicle manufacturing.
ISM manufacturing data for June and a meeting of the world’s top central bankers in Portugal are among the other factors that could end up moving markets as the third quarter kicks off.
The U.S. dollar slid another 0.2% against a weighted basket of its rivals Tuesday, off the back of its worst first-half performance since 1973. Gold prices climbed 1.3% to $3,349 an ounce. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell 3 basis points to 4.19%.