Markets on Wall Street were quietly mixed early Tuesday following a mixed session a day earlier that saw a third straight decline for red-hot chipmaker Nvidia.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average inched down 0.1%, while futures for the S&P 500 rose just less than 0.2%.
Nvidia rose 2.2% before the bell, clawing back some of its losses in recent sessions with the frenzy over artificial intelligence appearing to cool. Nvidia’s stock has been receding since it briefly overtook Microsoft as Wall Street’s most valuable last week, and it was down nearly 13% in just three days.
Microsoft shares were essentially flat after the European Union said the software giant violated antitrust rules with “possibly abusive” practices by tying its Teams messaging and videoconferencing app to its widely used business software, the bloc said.
Solar panel manufacturer SolarEdge tumbled more than 17% before the bell after it announced that customer PM&M Electric — which owes Solaredge more than $11 million — was filing for bankruptcy. SolarEdge also announced Monday that it planned to raise $300 million from the sale of convertible senior notes.
Toolmaker Epac slid more than 9% after it missed third-quarter sales targets and issued fourth-quarter revenue guidance that came in below analyst expectations.
Coming later Tuesday is the latest consumer confidence report from the Conference Board. In May, U.S. consumers showed an uptick in confidence after three straight months of declines amid still-elevated inflation and high interest rates.
Elsewhere, in Europe at midday, France’s CAC 40 lost 0.8%, Germany’s DAX sank 1% and Britain’s FTSE 100 was 0.2% lower.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 surged 1% to 39,173.15 after data from the Bank of Japan Tuesday showed the services producer price index in May was up 2.5% compared to the same period last year, a slowdown from the 2.7% increase seen in April.
The Japanese yen remains a focus of attention, with the US dollar to Japanese yen exchange rate still trading near its weakest level in approximately 34 years. The yen rose to 159.44 to the dollar in Tuesday trading. The dollar closed at 159.59 yen on Monday.
The Hang Seng in Hong Kong recovered most of the daytime losses to end 0.3% higher at 18,072.90 and the Shanghai Composite index dipped 0.4% to 2,950.00.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 1.4% to 7,838.80. In South Korea, the Kospi climbed 0.4% to 2,774.39.
Elsewhere, Taiwan’s Taiex was up 0.3%, while the SET in Bangkok advanced 0.1%.
In the bond market, Treasury yields mostly held steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury was unchanged from late Monday at 4.23%, while the yield on the 2-year note ticked up to 4.73% from 4.72%.
Yields have sunk on hopes that inflation is slowing enough to convince the Federal Reserve to cut its main interest rate later this year.
The Fed has been keeping the federal funds rate at the highest level in more than 20 years, hoping to grind down on the economy just enough to get inflation under control.
In other dealings Tuesday, U.S. benchmark crude oil gave up 55 cents to $81.08 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Brent crude lost 52 cents to $84.63 per barrel.
The euro slid to $1.0712.
On Monday, the S&P 500 slipped 0.3% to 5,447.87. The drops for Nvidia and other winners of Wall Street’s artificial intelligence boom pulled the Nasdaq composite down 1.1% to 17,496.82, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.7% to 39,411.21.
