Wall St. slips as trade talk comments digested; energy falls

By Caroline Valetkevitch

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks mostly dipped on Tuesday as investors weighed comments on trade talks between the United States and China and as energy and industrial shares fell.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he was not pleased with the recent U.S.-China trade talks and also raised doubts about the upcoming North Korea summit.

Trump also said the China trade talks "were a start" and that there was no deal with China on ZTE Corp <000063.SZ>. Trump has adopted a more conciliatory stance in the China talks as North Korea, whose chief ally is Beijing, has called into question a summit planned for next month in Singapore.

 

"We're still in limbo with the North Korea situation so unless we get something definitive, I don't think we're going to see any major catalyst in that category," said Alan Lancz, president at Alan B. Lancz & Associates Inc., an investment advisory firm, based in Toledo, Ohio.

The president's comments come after U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said over the weekend that the two countries had put the prospect of a trade war "on hold" and agreed to hold more talks to boost U.S. exports to China.

The industrial sector <.SPLRCI> dipped 1 percent, a day after posting its best one-day percentage gain in nearly two months on the trade truce, while the energy index <.SPNY> was down 1.3 percent.

At 3:24PM ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average <.DJI> was down 121.37 points, or 0.49 percent, at 24,891.92, the S&P 500 <.SPX> lost 2.89 points, or 0.11 percent, to 2,730.12 and the Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> added 1.81 points, or 0.02 percent, to 7,395.84.

Shares of Micron Technology climbed 8.2 percent after the memory-chip maker announced a $10 billion stock-buyback plan.

The financials sector rose 0.9 percent on hopes that a bill aimed at easing bank rules, put in place after the financial crisis, could be passed as soon as this week.

The consumer discretionary index <.SPLRCD> fell 0.3 percent after warnings from retailer Kohl's and auto parts seller Autozone.

Kohl's tumbled 6.9 percent, weighing on other retailers, after forecasting slower growth in the second half of the year.

Also, Autozone sank 8.7 percent after warning higher costs would persist due to wage pressure.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.25-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.05-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 29 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 144 new highs and 30 new lows.

(Additional reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Susan Thomas)