US markets close in red amid rising China-US tensions

25 Jul 2020 Evaluate

Extending their previous session’s losses, US markets ended lower on Friday as the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite notched its first back-to-back decline since mid-May. Also, investors fretted about rising US-China tensions and a lack of progress on another fiscal stimulus bill in Washington. Beijing decided to revoke the license for the establishment and operation of the US Consulate General in Chengdu. The move comes just days after the US government ordered China to close its consulate in Houston, Texas, amid accusations Chinese diplomats aided in economic espionage and the attempted theft of scientific research. Worries about the continued spike in coronavirus cases also generated some negative sentiment, with the US reporting 68,663 new cases on Thursday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

On the economic front, the Commerce Department released a report showing new home sales in the US continued to spike in the month of June. The Commerce Department said new home sales soared by 13.8 percent to an annual rate of 776,000 in June after skyrocketing by 19.4 percent to a revised rate of 682,000 in May. Street had expected new home sales to jump 3.6 percent to a rate of 700,000 from the 676,000 originally reported for the previous month. With the much bigger than expected increase, new home sales continued to rebound after falling to the lowest annual rate in well over a year in April and reached their highest level since July of 2007.

Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 182.44 points 0.68 percent to 26,469.89, Nasdaq lost 98.24 points or 0.94 percent 10,363.18 and S&P 500 was down by 20.03 points or 0.62 percent to 3,215.63.

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