NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 07: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on October 7, 2016 in New York City. U.S. stocks slipped Friday following a weaker-than-expected jobs report.The government reported Friday that the U.S. economy produced156,000 net new jobs in September, raising the unemployment rate up to 5% last month, largely because the labor force expanded by about 444,000 people. Spencer Platt/Getty Images/AFP == FOR NEWSPAPERS, INTERNET, TELCOS & TELEVISION USE ONLY ==
NEW YORK: US stocks fell on Tuesday amid broad declines across sectors after Alcoa kicked off the earnings season on a disappointing note.
Alcoa’s shares fell nearly 11%, their worst day in five years after the aluminum producer reported quarterly revenue and profit that fell short of the market’s expectation.
All the top S&P 500 indexes were lower, with healthcare stocks falling the most. Diagnostic test maker Illumina lost more than a quarter of its value after it cut its third-quarter revenue forecast for the second time in a row.
Overall earnings of the S&P 500 companies are expected to fall 0.7% in the third quarter, the fifth straight quarter of decline, according to Thomson Reuters data.
“You are coming up against very low expectations, which means the bar is already low. If you can’t match those expectations, then investors are going to quickly move to the exit,” said Adam Sarhan, chief executive at Sarhan Capital.
The dollar rose 0.56%, marking the second straight day of gains as investors priced in an 80% chance of a rate hike in December, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool.
At 10:59am ET (1459 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 149.74 points, or 0.82%, at 18,179.3.
The S&P 500 was down 19.6 points, or 0.91%, at 2,144.06 and the Nasdaq Composite was down 53.89 points, or 1.01%, at 5,274.78.
St Jude dropped 3% in heavy premarket trading after the company warned that some of its implanted heart devices are at risk of premature battery depletion, a condition it said had been linked to two patient deaths.
Rent-A-Center dropped 34.4% after the company estimated third-quarter earnings to fall below analysts’ expectations.
However, Apple touched a 10-month high after rival Samsung said it would scrap its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones due to safety concerns.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 2,337 to 491. On the Nasdaq, 1,984 issues fell and 586 advanced.
The S&P 500 index showed four new 52-week highs and four new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 34 new highs and 31 new lows. - Reuters
