Wall Street pumped the brakes on its recent rally Tuesday as a late slide in big technology companies left stocks broadly lower, erasing an early gain.
The reversal left the S&P 500 with a 0.8 percent loss after having been up 0.6 percent earlier. The decline in big-name technology stocks like Apple and Microsoft, plus losses in health care and communications stocks, outweighed gains in financial, industrial and energy companies. Tech stocks have far outpaced the rest of the market this year as investors bet they could still thrive in a stay-at-home economy.
The pullback ended the S&P 500's seven-day winning streak. Despite the sell-off, the benchmark index remains within 2 percent of the all-time high it reached in February, reflecting a stunning turnaround from a nearly 34 percent tumble in March when the coronavirus pandemic sent stocks into a nosedive.
Investors have grown more confident in recent weeks amid some positive economic data and better-than-expected second-quarter results from companies, suggesting corporate profits could be headed higher in the second half of this year and in 2021. Traders are also increasingly optimistic the many pharmaceutical companies working on ways to treat COVID-19 will deliver a working vaccine in the coming months.
The S&P 500 fell 26.78 points to 3,333.69. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 104.53 points, or 0.4 percent, to 27,686.91. The Nasdaq composite lost 185.53 points, or 1.7 percent, to 10,782.82. The Russell 2000 index of small company stocks gave up 9.57 points, or 0.6 percent, to 1,575.10.