A torrent of profit reports sends major indexes down; small stocks keep rising

NEW YORK —  U.S. stocks held relatively steady in a calm Tuesday on Wall Street, as earnings reporting season ramped up for big companies.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 slipped 8.67 points, or 0.2%, to 5,555.74. The Dow Jones industrial average edged down by 57.35 points, or 0.1%, to 40,358.09, and the Nasdaq composite dipped 10.22 points, or 0.1%, to 17,997.35.

But the smaller stocks in the Russell 2000 continued their big run and rose 1%. They’ve flipped the market’s leaderboard recently and zoomed higher amid hopes for coming cuts to interest rates.

The mixed trading came as dozens of companies reported their results for the spring, with the headliners of Alphabet and Tesla coming after trading closed for the day. Expectations are high, and analysts are forecasting the strongest profit growth for S&P 500 companies broadly since late 2021, according to FactSet.

UPS was one of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500 and tumbled 12.1% after delivering weaker profit and revenue for the spring than analysts expected.

But Chief Executive Carol Tomé said the company’s U.S. business delivered more packages than a year earlier, its first such growth in nine quarters, and called it a “significant turning point for our company.”

Nvidia was the stock most forcefully pushing downward in the S&P 500. Its loss of 0.8% for the day was relatively modest, but the S&P 500 gives more weight to bigger stocks, and Nvidia is worth more than $3 trillion.

Comcast dropped 2.6% after reporting revenue for the spring that fell short of expectations. Its biggest declines came from lower attendance at its U.S. theme parks and from its studios business, which didn’t have hits as big as last year’s “The Super Mario Bros.” and “Fast X” movies.

Helping to offset those losses was GE Aerospace, which flew 5.7% higher after beating analysts’ forecasts for profit in the spring and raising its forecast for earnings over the full year.

Zions Bancorp. jumped 6.2% after reporting better profit for the latest quarter than expected. It and stocks of other regional banks continue to recover from the industry’s mini crisis that began in March 2023, triggered by the punishing effects of high interest rates.

Sherwin-Williams, another company that felt the pain of high interest rates meant to get inflation under control, climbed 6.9% after delivering stronger profit for the latest quarter than expected. It said it’s seeing growth in demand for paint from new residential customers, and it expects the momentum to continue through the year.

That’s despite high mortgage rates having chilled the housing industry. A report on Tuesday showed sales of previously occupied homes weakened by even more in June than economists expected. Sales slowed in part because prices for previously occupied homes are at the highest levels ever recorded, according to the National Assn. of Realtors.

Easier times may be ahead for rates. With inflation slowing, the wide expectation on Wall Street is for the Federal Reserve to begin lowering its main interest rate in September. That would offer some relief for both the economy and financial markets after the Fed has held the federal funds rate at the highest level in more than two decades.

Treasury yields have sunk since the spring on such expectations, and they remain below their heights reached in April. The yield on the 10-year Treasury held steady at 4.25%, where it was in late Monday trading.

Hopes for coming cuts to rates have particularly helped smaller stocks recently. They can get bigger benefits from lower rates than their larger rivals.

It’s a sharp turnaround for smaller stocks, which lagged badly behind their bigger rivals, headlined by a small group known as the “Magnificent Seven,” for a while. Analysts see it as an encouraging signal when more stocks are participating in a rising market, rather than just a few dominant elites.

Companies’ profits will broadly need to hit a high bar of expectations in order to keep the U.S. stock market near its records, particularly as critics say stocks don’t look cheap after rising so much. What CEOs say about upcoming profits will also be key as investors watch for any hints that companies have less ability to keep their prices high, according to Chris Haverland, global equity strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed across Asia and Europe.

Chinese markets were some of the weakest, and stocks fell 0.9% in Hong Kong and 1.6% in Shanghai. Analysts described moves by China’s central bank to cut two key interest rates on Monday as not particularly inspiring.

Choe writes for the Associated Press