S&P and Nasdaq end at multi-week lows with Tesla, Alphabet weighing
S&P 500, Dow hit multi-week lows
Visa falls after missing revenue growth forecasts
AT&T rises after beating subscriber-addition estimates
Enphase Energy up after results
Updates to close
By David French
July 24 (Reuters) -The S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed atmulti-week lows on Wednesday, as lackluster earnings from Tesla and Alphabet undermined investor confidence in megacap tech names that had previously driven 2024's equity rally.
As the first of the Magnificent Seven stocks reported quarterly numbers, investors had been awaiting new data to see if lofty valuations were justified. With these seven companies having such sway over markets, their performance was bound to have wider repercussions.
Investor reactions pushed both the benchmark S&P 500 .SPX and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC to their lowest finishes since June. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI closed below 40,000 points for the first time in two weeks.
Dave Grecsek, managing director in investment strategy and research at Aspiriant, noted that the upward momentum of the first two weeks of July in equity markets had now disappeared over the last week.
"There's a little bit of profit-taking, and then people are a little apprehensive about earnings announcements upcoming," he said.
Tesla TSLA.O weighed heavily on Wednesday, slumping after theelectric-vehicle maker reported its lowest profit margin in more than five years and missed second-quarter earnings estimates.
Google parent Alphabet GOOGL.O dropped despitea second-quarter earnings beat, as investors focused on an advertising-growth slowdown and the company flagged high capital expenses for the year.
Tesla and Alphabet dragged the S&P 500 Communication Services .SPLRCL and Consumer Discretionary .SPLRCD sector indexes down, with InformationTechnology .SPLRCT also among the weakestperformers of the 11 S&P sectors.
Alphabet's losses underscored the high earnings bar for the so-called Magnificent Seven, a set of megacap tech stocks that have notched double- and triple-digit percentage gains in 2024, riding on optimism around AI adoption and expectations of an early start to the Federal Reserve's interest-rate cuts.
"When you put everything in an earnings context, you can really understand why those Mag 7 stocks have been performing so great because the earnings have been there," said Grecsek.
Any doubts, however, about the stocks meeting expectations will induce selling pressure.The other megacaps, Apple AAPL.O, Microsoft MSFT.O, Amazon.com AMZN.O, Meta Platforms META.O and Nvidia NVDA.O, all closed down.
Meanwhile, the blue-chip Dow .DJI did not escape the negativity.Visa V.N was among the stocks that weighed on it, droppingafter its third-quarter revenue growth fell short of expectations.
According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 128.10 points, or 2.31%, to end at 5,427.64 points, while the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC lost 654.94 points, or 3.64%, to 17,342.41. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 499.21 points, or 1.24%, to 39,858.88.
Chary of the high valuation of these companies, market participants started shifting to underperforming sectors in mid-July.
S&P 500 stocks, on average, are trading at a 21.4 price-to-earnings ratio, compared with the historical average of 15.9, LSEG data showed. Of the index companies that have reported second-quarter earnings to date, 78.9% have beaten results estimates.
A rotation into smaller-cap stocks has also been eyed, although they did not escape the ripples the megacaps caused: the Russell 2000 .RUT finished down.
In economic data, S&P Global's flash U.S. Composite PMI Output Index showed business activity climbed to a 27-month high in July.
Among others, AT&T T.N gained after beating forecasts for wireless subscriber additions, while solar inverter maker Enphase Energy ENPH.O jumped after reporting a second-quarter operating profit beat.
Meanwhile, Roper Technologies ROP.O dropped after it signaled third-quarter profit would fall below estimates. Boston Scientific BSX.N traded down, despite lifting its 2024 profit target and beating second-quarter earnings estimates.
Tesla's automotive gross margins https://tmsnrt.rs/4c2swJk
Reporting by Ankika Biswas and Lisa Mattackal in Bengaluru and David French in New York; Editing by Varun H K, Pooja Desai and Rod Nickel
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