A slide in banks and industrial companies nudged stocks on Wall Street to modest losses Wednesday after an early gain faded in the last half-hour of trading.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.2 percent, erasing its meager gain from a day earlier. The benchmark index’s modest moves this week have it on track for its first weekly loss in three weeks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gave up 0.4 percent, while the Nasdaq held up somewhat better, ending down just 0.1 percent.
Treasury yields slipped. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 1.49 percent from 1.52 percent late Tuesday. The falling yields broadly weighed down banks, which rely on higher yields to charge more lucrative interest on loans. JPMorgan and Citigroup fell 1.2 percent.
The S&P 500 fell 7.71 points to 4,219.55. The Dow lost 152.68 points to 34,447.14, while the Nasdaq Composite gave up an early gain, shedding 13.16 points to 13,911.75. The tech-heavy index was lifted by the same Big Tech companies that have pushed it generally higher for the last 18 months. Microsoft rose 0.4 percent and Amazon added 0.5 percent.