US close: Stocks turn red, tech plays still above water

Wall Street stocks finished in the red on Tuesday, as an earlier bounce in big tech and stocks tied to an economic reopening fell flat later in the session.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.24% at 34,312.46, the S&P 500 lost 0.21% to 4,188.13, and the Nasdaq Composite was off 0.03% at 13,657.17.

The Dow closed 0.24% lower on Tuesday, cutting into the gains made in the prior session.

Big technology plays were still in the green, however, with Facebook up 0.97%, Amazon ahead 0.43%, Microsoft rising 0.37%, and Alphabet eking out gains of 0.1%.

Shares in newly-floated cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase were also in the green by 7.59%, after Bitcoin bounced back to around $38,000 on Tuesday, having fallen below $32,000 on Sunday.

AutoZone was down 1.92%, however, even after it smashed quarterly earnings expectations earlier.

On the macro front, house price gains in the US accelerated further at the start of the year, fresh government data revealed.

According to the Federal Housing Financing Agency, house prices rose at a year-on-year rate of 12.6% over the first three months of 2021.

That was up from 12.3% in February and more than twice the rate observed over the same period one year ago.

In comparison to the month before, house prices jumped at a month-on-month pace of 1.4%.

Elsewhere, sales of new US homes declined more than forecast in April as higher prices continued to weigh on demand, with purchases of new single-family homes falling 5.9% to an annualised pace of 863,000.

That followed a downwardly-revised print of 917,000 for March and expectations for a reading of 950,000.

Lastly, the Conference Board's consumer confidence index held steady in May, following a gain in April, with the index now standing at 117.2, down only marginally from the 117.5 print seen a month earlier.

Dow Jones - Risers

Boeing Co. (BA) $240.74 1.39%
Walt Disney Co. (DIS) $176.17 1.07%
Home Depot Inc. (HD) $316.75 0.61%
Unitedhealth Group Inc. (UNH) $413.05 0.51%
Walmart Inc. (WMT) $142.34 0.41%
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) $251.72 0.37%
Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) $138.43 0.34%
Salesforce.Com Inc. (CRM) $227.71 0.32%
Nike Inc. (NKE) $134.32 0.19%
McDonald's Corp. (MCD) $232.14 0.10%