US close: Stocks sharply lower following Q2's first big-name tech earnings

dl nyse new york stock exchange new york city nyc wall street wall st nasdaq markets trading finance unsplash — Sharecast / David Vives via Unsplash

Wall Street stocks closed sharply lower on Wednesday after investors got their first taste of Q2 big tech earnings overnight and thumbed over a number of data points.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.25% at 39,853.87, while the S&P 500 lost 2.31% to 5,427.13 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 3.64% lower at 17,342.41.

The Dow closed 504.22 points lower on Wednesday, extending losses recorded in the previous session.

Google parent company Alphabet met expectations with its latest quarterly earnings report after the close but YouTube advertising revenues fell short of estimates, while electric carmaker Tesla's quarterly earnings nearly halved as a 7% year-on-year drop in revenues and price cuts put pressure on profits.

On the macro front, US mortgage applications fell 2.2% in the week ended 19 July, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, trimming the previous week's 3.9% increase. Applications to refinance a mortgage were broadly flat, while applications to purchase a new home fell 4%.

Elsewhere, a preliminary reading of June's goods trade balance narrowed to $96.84bn in June, according to the Census Bureau, down from May's revised two-year high of $99.37bn and below consensus estimates for a reading of $98.0bn.

On another note, wholesale inventories were up 0.2% month-on-month at $903.3bn in June, according to the Census Bureau, cooling from the prior period's 0.6% rise and below market expectations for a print of 0.5%.

Still on data, flash readings of S&P Global's manufacturing and services PMIs showed an unexpected decline to 49.5 and a modest improvement to 56 in July, respectively.

Finally, new home sales fell 0.6% month-on-month to 617,00 in June, according to the Census Bureau, as higher prices and mortgage rates continued to weigh on buyers' affordability.

In the corporate space, AT&T exceeded market expectations with its Q2 numbers, with the telecommunications giant revealing that its monthly bill-paying wireless phone subscribers had surged by 419,000, well ahead of consensus estimates for an increase of 284,800.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com

Dow Jones - Risers

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) $156.28 2.58%
Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) $39.67 2.01%
Coca-Cola Co. (KO) $65.81 1.31%
Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK) $125.92 1.24%
Amgen Inc. (AMGN) $335.61 1.17%
Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (WBA) $11.16 1.14%
Unitedhealth Group Inc. (UNH) $559.45 0.91%
Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) $167.95 0.83%
Chevron Corp. (CVX) $155.07 0.64%
Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) $46.85 0.63%