Wall Street declines

• JPMorgan, Citigroup help launch Q3 earnings season

• Boeing slips on more 737 MAX cancellations, fall in deliveries

NEW YORK: Wall Street lost ground on Tuesday, with halted Covid-19 vaccine trials and an elusive US stimulus agreement weighing on sentiment as third quarter earnings season got underway.

While all three major stock indexes closed in the red, a gain Microsoft Corp shares helped the mitigate the tech-heavy Nasdaq’s loss.

Johnson & Johnson announced on Monday it was pausing clinical trials of a Covid-19 vaccine candidate due to an unexplained illness in a study participant. The delay weighed on the company’s shares, even after its beat-and-raise earnings report. Its shares lost 2.3%.

Late in the session, rival Eli Lilly & Co said it was also halting its coronavirus antibody trial because of safety concerns, sending its shares down 2.9%.

Hopes for the passage of a new coronavirus relief package faded as US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected the $1.8 trillion coronavirus relief proposal from the White House, saying it “falls significantly short of what this pandemic and deep recession demand.”

Although JPMorgan handily beat consensus profit estimates, gaining from a boom in its trading business, its peer Citigroup, while also beating expectations, was slammed by low interest rates and a slowdown in loan demand. Their shares dropped 1.6% and 4.8%, respectively.

The broader S&P Banking index lost 2.7%.

Apple Inc unveiled the latest incarnation of its flagship gadget, the iPhone 12 with 5G connectivity. Its shares were down 2.7%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 157.71 points, or 0.55%, to 28,679.81, the S&P 500 lost 22.29 points, or 0.63%, to 3,511.93 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 12.36 points, or 0.1%, to 11,863.90.

Third-quarter reporting season has left the starting gate, and analysts now see S&P 500 earnings, in aggregate, falling by 19.6% year-on-year, according to Refinitiv.

Other earnings on tap this week include Bank of America Corp, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Wells Fargo & Co, UnitedHealth Group and United Airlines Holdings Inc expected on Wednesday, with Morgan Stanley and Honeywell International Inc due on Thursday.

Shares of Delta Air Lines Inc dropped 2.7% after the commercial carrier reported a 76% plunge in quarterly revenue and announced it has delayed a targeted halt to its cash bleed.

Planemaker Boeing Co reported order cancellations for its grounded 737 MAX aircraft and said deliveries were less than half the number as the same month a year ago. Its stock, was down 3.1% was the heaviest drag on the Dow.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 2.00-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.50-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 39 new 52-week highs and one new low; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 123 new highs and 14 new lows.

Volume on US exchanges was 8.50 billion shares, compared with the 9.72 billion average over the last 20 trading days.—Reuters