Stocks continue slide amid trade war uncertainty

A day of choppy trading on Wall Street ended Monday with stocks broadly lower as the market extended its losing streak into a fourth week.

Technology stocks, consumer-goods makers, health care companies and banks accounted for much of the selling, which accelerated in the last hour of trading, erasing modest gains from midday. Communication services stocks eked out a slight gain, bucking the broader market slide.

The S&P 500 fell 13.22 points, or 0.4%, at 2,938.79. The Dow Jones industrial average slid 95.70 points, or 0.4%, to 26,478.02. The Nasdaq dropped 26.18 points, or 0.3%, to 7,956.29.

Smaller-company stocks fared slightly better than the rest of the market. The Russell 2000 index slipped 2.91 points, or 0.2%, to 1,497.79.

Crude oil prices edged lower and bond yields rose. Bond prices fell, pushing the yield on the 10-year Treasury up to 1.56% from 1.51% late Friday.

The market is coming off a three-week skid following a mostly discouraging batch of economic data that stoked investors’ worries that a slowdown in United States economic growth could worsen.

The combination of uncertainty over the trade war between the U.S. and China, and the impeachment inquiry drama unfolding in Washington, is likely to continue to drag on the economy and weigh on markets, said Tony Roth, chief investment officer at Wilmington Trust.

“And that’s why the markets are treading water right now, waiting to see if another shoe drops,” Roth said.

The wobbly day in the market reflects the cautious approach that investors are taking as they try to gauge how the economy and corporate profits will fare amid the lingering trade war and political uncertainty in Washington.

Last week, the S&P 500 posted its first back-to-back losses of 1% this year as weak numbers in surveys of manufacturing and service industries showed the U.S.-China trade war is threatening U.S. economic growth.

Some of those fears were allayed on Friday when a government jobs report showed that employers are still adding jobs at a healthy clip and that the national unemployment rate dropped to a fivedecade low.

Still, last week marked the third weekly loss in a row for the broader market as the trade war takes its toll on confidence. Markets have been whipsawed for months by the ups and downs in the dispute.

“Labor has held up fairly OK, but we’re definitely decelerating from an economic standpoint, so corporate earnings may reflect that negatively,” Roth said. “The biggest drivers of the market are going to be who controls policy in Washington and what the specifics are around the Chinese trade situation.”

Envoys from Washington and Beijing are scheduled to meet later this week in their latest bid to put an end to the dispute that is stunting global economic growth and spooking the stock market.

Broadcom led the slide in technology stocks Monday, dropping 1.9%.

Beverage companies fell amid a sell-off in consumerproduct makers. Constellation Brands slid 2.6% and PepsiCo fell 1.4%. Coca-Cola lost 1.2%.

Several big drugmakers helped pull health care sector stocks lower. Abbott Laboratories gave up 1.2% and Merck & Co. slid 0.7%.

Financial sector stocks also declined, giving up early gains. Progressive dropped 1.5%.

Discovery led the gains in the communication services sector. The stock rose 1.4%.

Fox inched up 0.1% after the company settled a dispute with Dish Network over carriage of Fox’s local TV stations and cable sports networks. Dish pulled the broadcast network from 17 markets in September. Shares in Dish gained 0.2%.

ConocoPhillips climbed 2.1% after the energy company raised its quarterly dividend by 38% and will buy back $3 billion of its stock in 2020.

General Motors fell 0.5%. The stock has lost nearly 10% of its value since contract negotiations with the now striking United Auto Workers started to falter. The situation has taken another bad turn as negotiations hit a snag over product commitments for U.S. factories.