NEW YORK (AP) - Big banks weighed on the stock market Wednesday, tugging major indexes back from record highs.
Regulators from the U.S., Switzerland and the U.K. fined five major banks a total of $3.4 billion for conspiring to manipulate foreign-currency trading. The news drove down bank stocks in Europe and U.S. JPMorgan Chase fell more than 1 percent, the biggest drop in the Dow Jones industrial average.
"The fines from the watchdogs took some of the wind out of the market," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital Management. But a slight dip following five days of record highs "is actually healthy," he said. "That's the sign of a good bull market. Going straight up every day would be reckless."
The Standard & Poor's 500 index slipped 1.43 point, a sliver of a percent, to end at 2,038.25.
The Dow lost 2.70 points to 17,612.20, while the Nasdaq composite rose 14.58 points, or 0.3 percent, to 4,675.13.
On Tuesday, the S&P 500 closed at a record high for the fifth straight day.
Major markets in Europe closed with bigger losses. France's CAC 40 dropped 1.5 percent, while Germany's DAX lost 1.7 percent. Britain's FTSE 100 sank 0.2 percent.