US: S&P 500 falls after six straight positive sessions

[NEW YORK] Wall Street stocks retreated on Tuesday (May 20) as markets tracked congressional debate on US President Donald Trump’s tax cut proposal while monitoring US Treasury yields.

Major indices spent the entire session in negative territory as the S&P 500 finished lower after six straight positive sessions.

“The main driver is a consolidation day,” said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare. “The market has just been so red hot.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 0.3 per cent at 42,677.24.

The broad-based S&P 500 shed 0.4 per cent to 5,940.46, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index also fell 0.4 per cent to 19,142.72.

Trump visited Capitol Hill on Tuesday, where he faces challenges to unify a House Republican caucus that includes lawmakers from high-tax Northeastern states seeking a bigger tax deduction and members who are worried about increasing the deficit.

Investors have also been fixated on higher yields in the Treasury market. Moody’s highlighted the deficit last week in a downgrade of the US credit rating.

Among individual companies, Tesla gained 0.4 per cent as CEO Elon Musk said the company’s sales performance had improved in most markets after a difficult first quarter. Musk also expressed bullishness over the potential for autonomous driving and humanoid robotics to lift Tesla.

Google parent Alphabet fell 1.5 per cent as it touted new artificial features at its annual developers event. CEO Sundar Pichai said: “New AI mode is a total reimagining of search with more advanced reasoning”. AFP