Indexes

Money left one corner of this market on Tuesday and turned up almost everywhere else. Health care rose 2.36%, staples 1.99% and communication services 1.87%, while technology fell 1.84% and was the worst of the eleven sectors; the arithmetic of those weights left the S&P 500 up 0.21% and the Nasdaq Composite down 0.22% on the same afternoon. The Dow, whose thirty members include exactly one chipmaker, added 537.24 points for its best session since July 2. Underneath, the damage stayed narrow and deep: the VanEck Semiconductor ETF lost 3.45% in a fourth straight decline, and the Nasdaq 100 spent part of the morning at 27,452.95, more than 10% below its June 2 peak close of 30,660.60, before finishing 9.5% under it. Cheaper crude did the rest of the work, settling down 4.06% after Iran opened phone lines to Riyadh and Muscat. The three largest gainers in the S&P 500 were IQVIA at 13.94%, Incyte at 9.30% and Sherwin-Williams at 8.25%, all on their own second-quarter results, which is an unusual leaderboard for a day the market spent worrying about artificial intelligence.

Sector Heat Map

Seven of the eleven groups finished higher, and the four that did not are easier to explain than the ones that did.

Health care and staples rose alongside materials and discretionary, which does not usually happen, and it is the signature of buying driven by what investors are selling rather than by any view on growth. Energy fell with the barrel; utilities and industrials gave up less than half a percent apiece.

In the News

Rates, FX, Commodities

The long end drew the buying for a second session. What the market is arguing about on Wednesday is an interest-rate increase rather than a cut, and the odds of getting one this week have climbed from about a quarter to better than a third in the space of a week, which leaves the front end with less room to rally.

West Texas Intermediate has now given back 11.3% across Monday and Tuesday, from $89.31 at Friday's settlement. That is a larger move than the escalation itself produced in either direction.

Technicals

The S&P 500 closed at 7,428.78, still beneath a 20-day average of 7,492.27 and a 50-day of 7,469.94, and it has now spent four sessions failing to reach either. The 200-day is far below at 7,012.60. The Nasdaq Composite at 24,876.91 sits 4.4% under its own 50-day of 26,013.38, and its 200-day at 23,962.98 is the first line that has not yet been tested.

Government bonds are quieter. A 10-year at 4.604% sits in the upper half of the range it has kept since May, roughly 4.36% to 4.70%.

Nvidia (NVDA) is where the day turned. The shares fell as low as $192.74, beneath a 200-day average of $193.00, then recovered through the afternoon to close at $197.01, up 0.25%. The last close underneath that line was April 7.

Nvidia (NVDA), hourly: the morning break beneath $193 and the afternoon recovery to $197.01.

Breakouts & Breakdowns

Breakouts

Amgen (AMGN) — $393.10 is a 52-week high, cleared on a 4.48% advance. The 20-day average of $367.62 is the first support beneath, and nothing from the past twelve months sits above.

3M (MMM) — $182.48 is also a 52-week high, but the shares now sit 11.7% above a 20-day of $163.35. That distance usually gets closed by time rather than by price.

Breakdowns

Applied Materials (AMAT) — $476.46 surrenders the $500 line and leaves the 50-day at $539.81 well overhead. Next stop underneath is the late-April base near $381.

Intel (INTC) — $86.30 is the lowest close since April 28 and sits 24% below a 50-day of $114.10. The 200-day at $66.28 is the only structural reference left below.

Applied Materials (AMAT), daily: the $500 line lost, with the 50-day at $539.81 above.

Top Movers

Gainers

Coca-Cola (KO) rose 5.00% to $88.27, a 52-week closing high, after second-quarter adjusted earnings of 97 cents a share against the 93 cents expected, on revenue of $13.38 billion versus a $13.16 billion estimate. Zero-sugar demand, higher concentrate sales and a World Cup boost carried the quarter, and management raised its full-year comparable earnings growth range to 9% to 10% from 8% to 9%. A beverage company raising guidance on volume rather than price is the version of this report the market has been waiting three years for.

Boeing (BA) gained 4.76% to $221.56 despite a wider loss than forecast. The company reported a net loss of $428 million, or 67 cents a share, against $612 million and 92 cents a year ago; adjusted for one-time items the loss was 76 cents. What buyers took from it was the delivery line, where 171 commercial aircraft went out the door against 150 a year earlier, a 14% increase and the clearest evidence yet that production rates are holding.

PayPal (PYPL) advanced 4.01% to $58.32 on adjusted earnings of $1.38 a share against $1.28 expected, with revenue up 5% to $8.68 billion. Buy-now-pay-later volume jumped 26% and branded checkout continued to stabilise, which together let management raise full-year adjusted earnings guidance to $5.38 a share and reverse an earlier call for transaction margin dollars to shrink. Those dollars are now guided to $15.6 billion for the year against $15.5 billion in 2025.

Visa (V) added 1.12% to $366.59 during the session, a 52-week closing high, then reported after the bell. Net revenue of $11.6 billion rose 14% against a $11.35 billion estimate, adjusted earnings of $3.32 a share beat the $3.23 expected, payments volume grew 10% and cross-border volume excluding intra-Europe transactions rose 12%.

Losers

United Parcel Service (UPS) fell 6.57% to $105.53 after beating on both lines, which takes some doing. Adjusted earnings of $1.76 a share cleared the $1.66 expected and revenue of $22.8 billion beat a $21.84 billion estimate, but the company also booked $1.05 a share of charges tied to its Driver Choice Program and network reconfiguration. Management raised the full-year outlook to roughly $91.2 billion of revenue and $7.22 of adjusted earnings, and that raise is exactly what did the damage: it implies a full-year adjusted operating margin near 9.48%, under the 9.6% previously guided, and it comes with average daily United States package volume expected to fall in the mid single digits in the third quarter. The quarter's own adjusted operating margin expanded to 9.2% from 8.8%, which tells you the market was reading forward rather than back. Bloomberg's opinion desk noted that some holders are already looking past all of it to the Teamsters contract that has to be renegotiated in two years.

Micron Technology (MU) dropped 8.85% to $820.53, the third decline in a row and by far the largest. Seoul supplied the catalyst overnight, where the Kospi fell 10.84% and shares of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each lost more than 13%, but the price action is now doing something different from a reaction: at these levels the shares have given back roughly 32% from their closing peak this year, which is the market repricing how long memory scarcity lasts rather than trading a headline.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) lost 8.15% to $454.62, among the weakest large companies in the S&P 500. Its problem is the one shared across designers of artificial-intelligence accelerators, where the question has shifted from how many can be sold to who is financing the purchases. This was its fourth consecutive decline, and Arm Holdings fell 8.11% on the same reasoning.

Western Digital (WDC) closed at $463.51, a decline of 6.91% that leaves it 17% below its 50-day average.

Coca-Cola (KO), daily: a 52-week closing high at $88.27 on the second-quarter report.

United Parcel Service (UPS), daily: an earnings beat that closed 6.57% lower at $105.53.

Key Macro Data Today

The confidence report was softer than it looks. June was revised up to 92.2 from the 91.2 first published, so July's 90.8 is a decline of 1.4 points from a better starting point, and the whole of it came from how households assess conditions now. The present-situation index fell 3.6 points to 114.9 and has dropped three months running, while the expectations index did not move. Households are not forecasting trouble; they are describing it.

Notable Earnings This Session

Tuesday was heavy at both ends, with seven large reports before the bell and two more inside twenty minutes of the close.

Pre-Open

United Parcel Service, Coca-Cola, Boeing and PayPal all reported before the bell and are covered above, as are IQVIA, Incyte and Sherwin-Williams.

Post-Close

Ford Motor earned an adjusted 42 cents a share against the 35 cents expected, on revenue of $48.3 billion. The shares had closed 1.91% higher at $14.96 before the release. Visa's numbers are covered above.

Drivers

1. The Federal Open Market Committee publishes its decision Wednesday at 2 p.m. Eastern; the press conference follows at 2:30. The argument is over whether rates go up, and futures now put better than one-in-three odds on an increase this week and about four-in-five by September, which leaves the information in how many members dissent and in whatever the committee does to the inflation paragraph now that the barrel has fallen 11.3% since Friday. June inflation at 3.5% is what has kept a hold from being unanimous.

2. Microsoft and Meta Platforms report after Wednesday's close, and the lines that get read first are capital spending plans for next year. Tuesday established what the market currently does with artificial-intelligence spending news, which is sell the companies supplying the hardware. Microsoft closed at $393.35 after gaining 1.09%, still beneath its 50-day average.

3. Weekly petroleum inventories from the Energy Information Administration land at 10:30 a.m. Eastern, into a market that has repriced $10 of geopolitical premium out of the barrel in two sessions.

S&P 500 (SPY), daily: four sessions beneath the 20-day and 50-day averages.