The Nasdaq plunged 372.84 points (2%) to 17,889.01, the S&P 500 slumped 64.45 points (1.1%) to 5,712.20 and the Dow fell 132.71 points (0.3%) to 42,454.79. The sharp pullback by the Nasdaq came as big-name tech stocks came under pressure with shares of Nvidia (NVDA) plunging by 6%. Shares of Tesla (TSLA) have also tumbled by 5.6% while shares of Alphabet (GOOGL) and Meta Platforms (META) slumped by 3.2% and 2.5%.
The weakness in the tech sector may partly have reflected on-going uncertainty about President Donald Trump's tariff plans. Trump said during an interview with News max on Tuesday that new tariffs would probably be more lenient than reciprocal because reciprocal tariffs would be very tough for people. However, while Trump also said there would be exceptions to the tariffs, he noted there would be not too many exceptions. Stocks saw further downside after the White House said Trump plans to announce new tariffs on auto imports later this afternoon.
The Commerce Department released a report showing an unexpected increase by new orders for U.S. manufactured durable goods in the month of February. It also said durable goods orders climbed by 0.9% in February after spiking by an upwardly revised 3.3 in January. Excluding a jump by orders for transportation equipment, durable goods orders still rose by 0.7% in February after inching up by 0.1% in January.
Semiconductor stocks turned in some of the market's worst performances on the day, dragging the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index down by 3.3%. Computer hardware, networking and software stocks also saw notable weakness, contributing to the slump by the tech-heavy Nasdaq. Brokerage, pharmaceutical and retail stocks moved notably lower while oil producer stocks bucked the downtrend amid an increase by the price of crude oil.
Asia Pacific stocks moved mostly higher. Japan's Nikkei 225 Index advanced by 0.7% while Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index climbed by 0.6%. The major European markets turned in a mixed performance on the day while the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index rose by 0.3%, the French CAC 40 Index slumped by 1% and the German DAX Index tumbled by 1.2%.
In the bond market, treasuries gave back ground after moving higher over the course of the previous session. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, rose 3.1 bps to 4.33%.
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