US markets end lower on Tuesday

29 May 2019 Evaluate

The US markets ended lower on Tuesday on account of lingering concerns about the economic impact of the ongoing trade dispute between the US and China. President Donald Trump warned that US tariffs on Chinese goods could go up very, very substantially, very easily. Trump also said the US is not ready to make a deal and suggested China probably wishes they made the deal that they had on the table before they tried to renegotiate it. The trade war worries contributed to a slump in treasury yields, which in turn added to concerns about a potential recession. The yield on the benchmark ten-year note dropped to its lowest levels since September of 2017. However, during a trip to Japan over the weekend, President Donald Trump expressed optimism the US and China will eventually reach a trade agreement.

On the economic front, a report released by the Conference Board showed another substantial improvement in US consumer confidence in the month of May. The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index surged up to 134.1 in May after jumping to 129.2 in April. Street had expected the index to inch up to 129.8. The bigger than expected spike by the headline index was partly due to a sharp increase by the present situation index, which shot up 175.2 in May from 169.0 in April. The jump by the present situation index was primarily driven by employment gains, as consumers saying jobs are plentiful inched up to 47.2 percent from 46.5 percent and those claiming jobs are hard to get dropped to 10.9 percent from 13.3 percent.

Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 237.92 points or 0.93 percent to 25347.77, Nasdaq dropped 29.66 points or 0.39 percent to 7607.35 and S&P 500 was down by 23.67 points or 0.84 percent to 2802.39.

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