New York: U.S. stocks ended higher on Tuesday, as investors digested a mix of upbeat corporate earnings and evolving trade tensions, setting the stage for what many expect to be a pivotal week for the market.
The broader market, including the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average, also posted gains.
The Dow rose 134.13 points, or 0.30 percent, to 44,556.04. The S&P 500 added 43.31 points, or 0.72 percent, to 6,037.88. Seven of the 11 primary S&P 500 sectors ended in green, with energy and communication services leading the gainers by going up 2.18 percent and 1.48 percent, respectively.
Meanwhile, utilities and consumer staples led the laggards by dropping 0.88 percent and 0.51 percent, respectively.
The Nasdaq Composite, buoyed by a surge in chip stocks and a significant boost from Palantir, added 262.06 points, or 1.35 percent after the software and data analytics company reported fourth-quarter results that exceeded analyst expectations. Palantir, alongside gains in other tech giants such as Nvidia and Microsoft, helped lift the tech-heavy index, even as concerns over future tariffs and regulatory policies persisted.
China unveiled retaliatory measures against the United States shortly after U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods took effect on Tuesday, raising fears of more trade tensions. The Chinese Ministry of Finance announced it would impose an additional 15 percent tariff on coal and liquefied natural gas imports from the United States, as well as increase duties by 10 percent on American crude oil, agricultural machinery, and certain cars starting from Feb. 10.
“These are political tariffs, not economic tariffs, and so they’re not going to last,” Infrastructure Capital Advisors’s chief executive Jay Hatfield said. “What we do think, which is out of consensus, is that eventually we’re going to end up with 5 percent to 10 percent tariffs on most imported goods, and that is tolerable.”
Traders also took in fresh U.S. jobs data, as the available positions fell to 7.6 million, the lowest level since September and below the Dow Jones forecast of 8 million, according to the Labor Department’s monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. This drop resulted in the ratio of open jobs to available workers falling to 1.1 to 1, signaling a tightening in the labor market despite stable hiring activity.
On the corporate front, Alphabet’s shares fell more than 6 percent in after-hours trading after its quarterly revenue came in slightly below expectations. The company reported total revenue of 96.47 billion U.S. dollars and earnings per share of 2.15 U.S. dollars, with its cloud revenue at 11.96 billion U.S. dollars falling short of the Bloomberg consensus estimate.
