US shares weakened in cautious trading on Tuesday as nervous investors sought low-risk assets after Turkish jets shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border. Oil prices were up more than 2 percent on the prospect of more chaos in the Middle East. Gold and US Treasuries, traditional safe-haven assets, also rose.
"This has really gotten investors' attention," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago. "Investors are worried that tensions could escalate." Travel-related stocks fell after the US State Department issued a global travel alert for Americans. Among airlines, United Continental fell 3.8 percent, American Airlines 4 percent and Delta Air Lines 3.8 percent.
Shares of travel website operators Priceline and TripAdvisor dropped about 3 percent. Cruise operators Carnival Corp and Royal Caribbean slid by similar percentages. The Commerce Department revised third-quarter GDP growth to an annual rate of 2.1 percent, in line with expectations but up from 1.5 percent estimated previously. But data from the Conference Board showed consumer sentiment in November was the lowest since September 2014. At 11:26 am ET (1626 GMT), the Dow Jones industrial average was down 33.41 points, or 0.19 percent, at 17,759.27, the S&P 500 was down 6.82 points, or 0.33 percent, at 2,079.77 and the Nasdaq Composite index was down 28.84 points, or 0.57 percent, at 5,073.64. Eight of the 10 major S&P sectors were lower, led by the consumer discretionary sector's 1.05 percent decline. Amazon and Disney were the biggest drags.