Stocks cap wobbly day of trading with modest losses

Technology companies led stocks lower on Wall Street on Tuesday as a wobbly day of trading ended with modest losses for the market.

Healthcare stocks jumped on stronger-thanexpected reports from drugmakers, but losses for internet and media companies held the market in check after a mixed report from Google parent Alphabet.

Companies have largely been reporting stronger earnings than analysts expected, but they’re nowhere close to blow-away good. S&P 500 companies are still on track to report a third straight quarter of profit declines, according to FactSet.

Tuesday’s modest market pullback came a day after the S&P 500 hit an alltime high. The benchmark index mostly drifted between small gains and losses Tuesday, finishing within 0.1% of its record.

“The market was a little bit overbought,” said Janet Johnston of TrimTabs Asset Management. “It’s a good sign that it continues to hold at new highs.”

The S&P 500 slipped 2.53 points, or 0.1%, to 3,036.89.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 19.26 points, or 0.1%, to 27,071.46. The Nasdaq composite slid 49.13 points, or 0.6%, to 8,276.85.

Smaller companies fared better than the rest of the market. The Russell 2000 index rose 5.14 points, or 0.3%, to 1,577.07.

Major stock indexes in Europe closed mostly lower. The price of crude oil dropped a second straight day, and gold dipped.

U.S. stocks are on track to end October with gains. The S&P 500 has closed with a weekly gain the last three weeks.

Helping to buoy the market in recent weeks are hopes that the U.S. and China can make progress on their trade dispute. Lower interest rates have also played a big role.

Treasury yields slipped ahead of the decision. The yield on the 10-year Treasury slid to 1.83% from 1.85% late Monday. The two-year yield fell to 1.63% from 1.64%.

Benchmark crude oil fell 27 cents to $55.54 a barrel. Brent crude oil, the international standard, inched up 2 cents to $61.59 a barrel.

Gold fell $5.00 to $1,487.40 per ounce. The dollar fell to 108.81 Japanese yen from 109.02 yen on Monday. The euro strengthened to $1.1110 from $1.1098.

Nearly half of the companies in the S&P 500 have told investors how much they earned in the July-through-September quarter, and the index is on pace to report a profit drop of 3.5% from the prior year, according to FactSet.

That’s not as bad as the roughly 4% decline analysts were expecting on the eve of earnings reporting season, but it would be the first time profits fell for three straight quarters since 2015-16.

Trade wars and the slowing global economy are hitting companies that do lots of business overseas, and analysts say the sharpest earnings declines will come from energy companies, raw-material producers and technology firms.

Healthcare stocks had the biggest gains among the 11 sectors that make up the S&P 500 following betterthan-expected reports from Pfizer and Merck.

Pfizer shares rose 2.5% after it raised its forecast for the year. Merck stock gained 3.5% after big jumps in sales for cancer drug Keytruda and the vaccine Gardasil.