Stock market today: Wall Street wavers as sharp swings continue

NEW YORK -- U.S. stocks are wavering on Wall Street Tuesday as the market remains unsettled following weeks of sharp swings.

The S&P 500 rose 0.1% in afternoon trading and has been shifting between slight gains and losses throughout the day. It’s only 3.4% below its record set in July, but it’s been careening down and up since then amid worries about the slowing U.S. economy and whether coming cuts to interest rates will keep it out of a possible recession.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 161 points, or 0.4%, as of 1:41 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% higher.

Banks were among the biggest weights on the market, along with technology stocks. Goldman Sachs fell 5.2% after its chief executive said its trading revenue for the current quarter is trending down 10% at the moment. JPMorgan Chase fell 7% and Bank of America fell 2.7%. Shares of Ally Financial plunged 18.5%. The chief financial officer of the bank said that borrowers are struggling with high inflation and cost of living.

Energy stocks fell along with oil prices. U.S. crude oil prices slumped 4.2% and Exxon Mobil fell 3.7%.

Apple fell 0.1% after the European Union’s top court rejected the tech giant’s final legal challenge against an order from the bloc’s executive commission to repay 13 billion euros — more than $14 billion — in back taxes to Ireland.

The European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, accused Apple of striking an illegal tax deal with Irish authorities so that it could pay extremely low rates. Apple denies such a deal took place.

Apple, which unveiled its latest iPhone model on Monday, wasn’t the only American tech company being punished by European regulators Tuesday. Google lost its final legal challenge against a European Union penalty for giving its own shopping recommendations an illegal advantage over rivals in search results. The decision ends the long-running antitrust case that comes with 2.4 billion euro ($2.7 billion) penalty.

Shares in Alphabet, Google’s parent company, edged 0.5% higher.

Oracle jumped 11.5% after delivering better profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

Trading otherwise was mostly quiet, including in the bond market where yields eased a bit. Like stocks, Treasury yields have been swinging sharply ahead of the Federal Reserve’s meeting next week, where the widespread expectation is for it to cut its main interest rate for the first time since the COVID crash of 2020.

The Fed is turning its focus away from stifling high inflation and toward protecting the economy. The debate on Wall Street is now focused on how much the Fed will cut the federal funds rate, which has been sitting at a two-decade high, and whether the easing will ultimately prove to be too late to prevent a recession.

Reports coming on Wednesday and Thursday on inflation could influence the size of the Fed’s upcoming cuts. The worst case for the Fed would be if inflation were to reaccelerate when the job market looks fragile, because helping either of those would require opposing moves.

On Wednesday, though, economists expect the latest report on inflation to show prices for U.S. consumers were 2.6% higher in August than a year earlier. That would be a slowdown from July’s inflation rate of 2.9%

Ahead of that will be Tuesday evening’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Foreign-exchange strategists at Bank of America say it could be the next catalyst for the market.

The value of the U.S. dollar has increased against peers in the past when expectations for a Trump re-election have strengthened, among other moves that have come to be known as part of the “Trump trade,” due in part to his calling for tariffs. But economists are debating what impact either candidate’s proposed policies would ultimately have on the economy, and the bigger deal may be whether one party is able to sweep into control of both Congress and the White House.

For as much attention as the presidential debate is getting, the “market moving implications are almost nonexistent,” according to Julian Emanuel and other strategists at Evercore ISI.

Strategists at Wells Fargo Investment Institute are looking for gridlock to continue, with neither party getting big enough majorities to pass transformative legislation. Because of that, “we think the economy is much more likely to move markets than elections,” said Paul Christopher, head of global investment strategy, and Jennifer Timmerman, investment strategy analyst.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 3.65% from 3.70% late Monday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes slipped in Europe after finishing mixed in Asia. Stocks rose 0.2% in Hong Kong and 0.3% in Shanghai after China’s customs office reported the country’s exports grew for a fifth consecutive month, in a sign of growing demand abroad.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Yuri Kageyama contributed.