Wall Street sags in beginning to 2024

Many expecting pause in rally of nine straight winning weeks

NEW YORK — A weak start to 2024 had Wall Street on Tuesday giving back a bit of its powerful gains from the year before.

The S&P 500 slipped 27 points, or 0.6 percent, to 4,742.83 after coming into the year at the brink of its all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average edged up 25.50, or 0.1 percent, to 37,715.04, and the Nasdaq composite led the market lower with a drop of 245.41, or 1.6 percent, to 14,765.94.

Some of the market’s sharper drops came from stocks that were last year’s biggest winners. Apple lost 3.6 percent for its worst day in nearly five months, and Nvidia and Meta Platforms both fell more than 2 percent. Tesla, another member of the “Magnificent 7” Big Tech stocks that drove well over half of Wall Street’s returns last year, swung between losses and gains after reporting its deliveries and production for the end of 2024. It ended the day down by less than 0.1 percent.

Netherlands-based ASML sank after the Dutch government partially revoked a license to ship some products to customers in China. The United States has been pushing for restrictions on exports of chip technology to China. ASML’S U.s.-listed shares fell 5.3 percent, and U.S. chip stocks also weakened.

Health care stocks held up better after Wall Street analysts upgraded ratings on a few, including a 13.1 percent jump for Moderna. Amgen’s 3.3 percent gain and Unitedhealth Group’s 2.4 percent climb were two of the strongest forces lifting the Dow.

Much of Wall Street had been preparing for at least a pause in the big rally that carried the S&P 500 to nine straight winning weeks and within 0.6 percent of its record set almost two years ago. That big surge came on hopes the Federal Reserve may have engineered a perfect escape from high inflation: one where high interest rates slow the economy enough to cool inflation but not so much that they cause a painful recession.

Now, the hope is that the Fed will shift in 2024 and cut interest rates several times. But though such hopes are high, it’s still not assured. And prices for stocks and bonds have already rallied hard on expectations for them.

Treasury yields in the bond market also regressed Tuesday after their big moves since autumn. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 3.94 percent from 3.87 percent Friday.