Stocks ended broadly lower on Wall Street Tuesday as trading turned wobbly a day after the market notched its biggest jump in more than five weeks.
The S&P 500 fell 1 percent after having been up by 0.4 percent in the early going. Losses in banks, health care stocks and household goods companies accounted for a big portion of the selling. A late-day slide erased early strength in technology stocks and companies that rely on consumer spending.
Bond yields mostly fell and the price of gold rose, signs that investors were feeling cautious.
The S&P 500 lost 30.97 points to 2,922.94, snapping a three-day winning streak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 390.51 points, or 1.6 percent, to 24,206.86. The Nasdaq composite dropped 49.72 points, or 0.5 percent, to 9,185.10. The Russell 2000 index of small-company stocks gave up 25.97 points, or 1.9 percent, to 1,307.72.
Wall Street kicked off the week with a bang, as optimism about a potential vaccine for COVID-19 and hopes for a U.S. economic recovery in the second half of the year pushed stocks sharply higher Monday, reversing all of the market’s losses so far this month. Tuesday’s selling cut into some of those gains. The S&P 500 is now down 13.7 percent from its all-time high in February.