S&P 500, Nasdaq stumble on caution ahead of tech earnings
Refiles to fix S&P 500 link in paragraph 7
Job openings stood at 8.18 million in June
Procter & Gamble drops on sales expectations miss
Merck down after cutting annual profit forecast
By Chuck Mikolajczak
NEW YORK, July 30 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 and Nasdaq stumbled to close lower on Tuesday, weighed down by weak chip and megacap shares ahead of earnings from heavyweight tech companies this week, but the Dow managed modest gains.
Microsoft <MSFT.O>, seen by many as leading the artificial intelligence race, fell ahead of itsquarterly results due after the closing bell.
Chipmaker Nvidia NVDA.O, regarded as a prime beneficiary of potential AI growth and the year's second best S&P 500 performer, tumbled, weighing on other chip stocks and the Philadelphia semiconductor index .SOX.
Other megacap names suchas AppleAAPL.O, Amazon.com AMZN.O andMeta PlatformsMETA.O, were all due to report earnings this week. Amazon and Meta shares fell while Apple managed a slight gain on growing concerns that the stocks might be overvalued.
"A lot of people are looking at artificial intelligence now and saying this is all great but I how do I make money on it," said Stephen Massocca, senior vice president at Wedbush Securities in San Francisco.
"Financially the companies are probably doing quite well, but the question is what are you paying for this? These are not cheap stocks and so you need to go into these things with your eyes open."
According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 27.08 points, or 0.50%, to end at 5,436.46 points, while the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC lost 222.78 points, or 1.28%, to 17,147.42. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 205.96 points, or 0.51%, to 40,745.89.
Small cap .RUT andvalue stocks.IVX such as financials .SPSY outperformed the broader market to extend a recent rotation out of more expensive stocks as the market has solidified expectations the Federal Reserve will cut rates this year following signs of moderating inflation.
The S&P 500 financials index jumped to lead gains among the 11 major S&P sectors while technology .SPLRCT was the worst performer.
Megacap stocks fell last week onTesla's disappointing results and Alphabet's higherexpenditure forecast, promptinga broad-based market sell-off.
The market is betting on a slight chance that the Fed will cut rates by at least 25 basis points at the end of its policymaking meeting on Wednesday, but it is completely pricing in a cut for the U.S. central bank's September meeting, CME'sFedWatch Tool showed.
Several labor data releases are scheduled for this week, culminating in Friday's government payrolls report. On Tuesday,a Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey pointed to8.18 million job openings in June, compared to economists' expectation of 8 million.
Among single stocks, Procter& Gamble PG.N tumbled after missingfourth-quarter sales expectations.
Merck MRK.N plungedafter the drugmakercut its annual profit forecast.CrowdStrike CRWD.O droppedafter a report that Delta Air Lines DAL.N sought compensation from the cybersecurity firm and Microsoft forthe carrier's global cyber outage earlier this month.
Cybersecurity and cloud services company F5 FFIV.O surged nearlyafter forecasting fourth-quarter results above estimates.
JOLTS https://reut.rs/46I0Rwt
Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Richard Chang
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