TSX essentially flat, tech drags down U.S. markets

Canada’s main stock index moved a hair lower on Tuesday, while U.S. markets fell, led by the Nasdaq losing 1.65 per cent.

Big technology stocks dragged down U.S. markets, said Anish Chopra, managing director with Portfolio Management Corp.

One major drag on markets was Apple, which is seeing iPhone sales in China weaken. Apple’s stock price was down 2.8 per cent on Tuesday.

“In addition to potentially highlighting the weakness in the Chinese economy, you also have competition from domestic rivals in China,” said Chopra. “It’s just a more competitive environment.”

Other major tech stocks also declined, with Microsoft losing almost three per cent and Tesla down almost four per cent.

However, it’s also been a strong run for markets recently as they’ve hit multiple records, and so it’s not a surprise to see a day of weakness, said Chopra.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 404.64 points at 38585.19. The S&P 500 index was down 52.30 points at 5078.65,while the Nasdaq composite was down 267.92 points at 15939.59.

Canadian markets, meanwhile, were relatively flat as the TSX is significantly less weighted toward big tech.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 5.14 points at 21525.93.

Investors are anticipating some important economic news this week, especially labour data and U.S. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell testifying before Congress.

Economic strength has led investors to pare back their expectations for interest rate cuts. The Bank of Canada is set to announce its latest rate decision today.

U.S. economic reports released Tuesday showed growth for construction, health care and other services industries slowed last month more than expected, while prices paid by services businesses rose at a slower pace than the month before.

“The U.S. economy is still growing, based on those reports,” said Chopra.

Bitcoin also hit a new record on Tuesday before pulling back somewhat. The digital currency has been gaining popularity in part because of new bitcoin ETFs in the U.S.

The Canadian dollar traded for 73.63 cents US compared with

73.68 cents US on Monday.

The April crude contract was down 59 cents at $78.15 US per barrel and the April natural gas contract was up four cents at $1.96 US per mmBTU.

The April gold contract was up $15.60 US at $2,141.90 US an ounce and the May copper contract was down a penny at $3.85 US a pound.

Facebook, Instagram back up after widespread outage

A technical issue caused login disruptions globally for a few hours across Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Messenger platforms Tuesday.

Andy Stone, Meta’s head of communications, acknowledged the issues on X, formerly known as Twitter, and said the company “resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

Users reported being locked out of their Facebook accounts and feeds on the platform as well as Threads and Instagram were not refreshing. WhatsApp, which is also owned by Meta, appeared unaffected.

A senior official with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency told reporters Tuesday that the agency was “not aware of any specific election nexus nor any specific malicious cyberactivity nexus to the outage.”