S&P 500 declines after 7 record highs

Banks and energy companies helped pull stocks mostly lower on Wall Street on Tuesday, ending the S&P 500’s seven-day run of record high closes.

The benchmark index fell 0.2 percent after having been down 0.9 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.6 percent. Tech stocks rose, helping the Nasdaq to a modest gain that nudged the index to an all-time high.

Oil prices retreated after jumping overnight when talks among members of the OPEC cartel and allied oil producing countries broke off amid a standoff with the United Arab Emirates

over production levels. The news dragged energy stocks lower.

Bond prices rose, sending the yield on the 10-year Treasury to its lowest level since February. The decline in bond yields weighed on banks, which led the slide in the S&P 500.

“We had a really strong move coming into this week,” said Mark Hackett, chief of investment research at Nationwide. “It’s almost natural to have a pullback when you have that kind of move.”

The S&P 500 dropped 8.80 points to 4,343.54. The index notched seven consecutive record highs from June 24 through last Friday, gaining 2.6 percent during that period. It’s now up 15.6 percent for the year.

The market sell-off got going early following a report showing growth in the services sector, where most people in the U.S. work, slowed in June following record expansion in May.

Longer-term Treasury yields sank as the report suggested this year’s surge in inflation may have already peaked and as nervousness rose in the market.

The 10-year Treasury yield dropped to 1.36 percent from 1.44 percent on Friday and is back to where it was in February. It had rallied powerfully earlier this year on worries that inflation was set to burst to dangerous levels as the economy roared back to life.

The report indicated prices that U.S. services businesses are paying rose at a slower rate last month. Exam gloves and masks got cheaper, for example, and the price index for the U.S. services industry decelerated to 79.5 in June after hitting a peak of 80.6 in May, according to the Institute for Supply Management. Any reading above 50 indicates growth.

More broadly, the services industry’s growth slowed last month, and by more than economists expected. That fits into Wall Street’s increasing belief that growth for many areas of the economy is peaking or has done so already.

“What I took from that is that economic growth is slowing,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA.