Wall Street drifts through a rare quiet day following weeks of tariff turmoil

The New York Stock Exchange. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg)

U.S. stocks drifted Tuesday through a rare quiet day for financial markets.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 155 points, or 0.4%, and the Nasdaq composite edged down by less than 0.1%.

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The modest moves offered some respite following the huge swings that have battered Wall Street recently, not just day to day but also hour to hour. The day before, the S&P 500 went from a gain of 1.8% to a slight loss and back to a gain as it struggled to keep up with shifts in President Donald Trump’s trade war, which economists warn could cause a global recession unless it’s scaled back.

Perhaps more importantly, the U.S. bond market also showed more signs of calm after its sudden and sharp moves last week raised worries that investors worldwide may no longer see U.S. government bonds as a no-brainer go-to when times are scary.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.33% from 4.38% late Monday. It had pulled back to there from 4.48% at the end of last week after surging from just 4.01% a week earlier. A drop in yields is what usually happens when investors are scared, and this week’s moves offer a return to form for what historically had been seen as one of the safest investments possible.

The value of the U.S. dollar also steadied after tumbling last week, which had raised more worries that Trump’s trade war was degrading its status as a safe-haven investment, as with U.S. Treasury bonds. The dollar’s value ticked higher against the euro and Swiss franc, though it slipped against the British pound.

On Wall Street, Albertsons’ stock fell 7.6% despite reporting a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The company behind Safeway, Vons and other grocery stores gave a forecast for profit in the upcoming year that was short of analysts’.

DaVita sank 3% for a second straight drop after it said a ransomware attack is affecting some of its operations. The health care company said it’s still investigating the attack, which it learned about Saturday, and that it can’t yet know the “full scope, nature, and potential ultimate impact.”

On the winning side of Wall Street was Bank of America, which climbed 3.6% after the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

Most big U.S. banks have been reporting strong results for the start of the year, boosted by their stock trading desks taking advantage of all the huge swings caused by Trump’s on-again-off-again tariff announcements. Citigroup also topped analysts’ expectations, and its stock rose 1.8%.

Palantir Technologies climbed 6.2% for a second day of gains after NATO said it would use the company’s artificial-intelligence capabilities in its allied command operations.

All told, the S&P 500 slipped 9.34 points to 5,396.63. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 155.83 to 40,368.96, and the Nasdaq composite edged down by 8.32 to 16,823.17.

Even with the market’s modest moves Tuesday, worries continue about the trade war. The United States and China, the world’s two largest economies, have been announcing ever-increasing tariffs on each other’s goods, along with other countermeasures to raise the stakes.

Trump has said he wants to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States, and he also wants to trim how much more his country exports to other countries than it imports.

China’s leadership, meanwhile, has been trying to present itself as a source of “stability and certainty” as it visits countries across Southeast Asia this week.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia. Germany’s DAX returned 1.4%, and the FTSE 100 in London climbed 1.4%.

Automakers helped drive indexes higher in Asia, where Japan’s Nikkei 225 added 0.8% and South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.9%.

Chinese stocks wobbled, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rising 0.2% after fluctuating much of the day. Stocks in Shanghai added 0.1%.

Stan Choe, The Associated Press

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.