Traders Edge – Friday 24th August

Wall Street’s major indexes fell as trade-sensitive stocks were hit by a fresh round of tariffs in the trade dispute between the United States and China. Despite ongoing talks, the two countries imposed tariffs on $US16 billion ($A22 billion) worth of each other’s goods. Shares of industrial giants Caterpillar and Boeing, which have been bellwethers of trade sentiment, were among the biggest drags on the Dow. Caterpillar shares fell 2.0 per cent, and Boeing shares fell 0.7 per cent.

In the S&P 500, the technology sector was the sole gainer, rising 0.2 per cent. But it pared gains late in the session, sending the tech-heavy Nasdaq into negative territory along with the S&P and the Dow. “It’s tough to say how far this will go,” Brendan Erne, director of portfolio implementation at Personal Capital in San Francisco, said of the US-China trade dispute. “It could be a fairly long and winding road, but at least it’s encouraging that both sides are talking now.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 76.62 points, or 0.3 per cent, to 25,656.98, the S&P 500 lost 4.84 points, or 0.17 per cent, to 2,856.98 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 10.64 points, or 0.13 per cent, to 7,878.46. The energy index fell 0.5 per cent and the materials index fell 0.7 per cent, the biggest percentage drops among the S&P’s major sectors, as prices of crude oil and metals fell due to trade war worries. The potential political fallout from the legal woes of two former advisers to US President Donald Trump also weighed on investor sentiment.