Wall Street steadies as trade war worries cool

By Ankur Banerjee and Sruthi Shankar

(Reuters) - Wall Street steadied on Tuesday as signs of easing tensions in the Korean Peninsula and political pressure against U.S. metals tariffs offset the fears of a global trade war that have dominated markets since last week.

A Bloomberg report quoting a close ally of President Donald Trump as saying that Trump was open to changes to his proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum was cited by traders as behind a midday jump into positive territory for the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500.

By 2 p.m. ET all three indices had settled to trade flat or slightly higher on the day after a volatile morning marked chiefly by news that North Korea was open to the possibility of talks with the United States on denuclearization.

"The President has followed through many other times, investors are waiting for the next one to come from him to give a firmer indication of which way he's going to truly head," said Michael O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading in Greenwich, Connecticut.

"I think the market's split at the moment on it,"

The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded flat at 24,874.46. The S&P 500 rose 0.13 percent to 2,724.62 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.35 percent to 7,356.09.

Among bigger movers, shares in Target fell 5.6 percent after the big-box retailer reported lower-than-expected profit for the holiday quarter.

Qualcomm dropped more than 3 percent after a U.S. government national security panel said it identified potential risks that warrant a full investigation of Broadcom Ltd's $117 billion bid for the chipmaker.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1,701 to 1,098. On the Nasdaq, 1,692 issues rose and 1,144 fell.

"There's a big narrative saying I'm going to be risk neutral and so the markets are going to oscillate," said Matt Lloyd, chief investment strategist at Advisors Asset Management in Monument, Colorado.

(Reporting by Ankur Banerjee and Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)