Wall Street claws back some lost ground
NEW YORK — Banks, retailers, health care and energy companies climbed Tuesday as U.S. stocks regained much of what they lost in a steep drop a day earlier. Several big technology companies including Apple also recovered.
Banks rose as interest rates turned higher, and automakers Ford and General Motors jumped after saying their sales rose in March after a rough start to the year.
Craig Holke, analyst for the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said the market will continue to bounce around as investors worry about changes in trade that could slow the global economy and company profits.
Among individual stocks, CBS added 4.2 percent to $52.86 amid reports it plans to make an offer to buy corporate sibling Viacom. The offer is reported to be for less than Viacom's current market value, and Viacom stock fell 3.7 percent to $29.42.
Music streaming company Spotify made its debut Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange. Instead of raising money through an initial public offering underwritten by an investment bank, Spotify Technologies took a more unusual route called a direct listing that lets investors sell the stock directly. It started trading at $165.90 a share, well above the previous high share price of $132.50 it reached in private deals. The stock wound up closing down 10.2 percent at $149.01.
The Nasdaq, which set its most recent record on March 12, is down 7.5 percent in just three weeks. Some of the market's woes stem from the fact that several of the largest tech companies have come under fire at the same time.
Facebook is still deep in the fallout of an ever-widening privacy scandal, and if the government decides to regulate online consumer data in new ways, that also might affect Alphabet, Google's parent company, as well as smaller social media companies like Twitter and Snap.
Meanwhile, Amazon, which isn't officially classified as a technology company, has come under fire from President Donald Trump, who has griped about the company's tax payments, deals with the U.S. Postal Service and other issues. His statements have often diverged from the facts, and he's blamed Amazon for critical news coverage of his administration by the Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos but isn't part of Amazon.
Amazon spiked 1.5 percent to $1,392.05 after Bloomberg News reported that the White House isn't talking about taking any steps against the company. Still, Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson said Trump is likely to continue periodically bashing the company for as long as he's in office, but steps like sales tax collection changes won't affect Amazon much, and the Post Service probably won't raise shipping rates much, either.