The US stock market held near its record high on Tuesday after oil prices eased again.
The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged, edging down by less than 0.1%, and is sitting 0.4% below its all-time high set last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 185 points, or 0.4%, while the Nasdaq composite added 0.5% to its own record.
Oil settles below $US100
Stocks had been higher in the morning, when the price for a barrel of Brent crude briefly fell below $US98. Oil later pared some of those losses and settled at $US99.25 a barrel, down 1.1%.
That's down from the nearly $US110 that it touched last week, but it's still much more expensive than the $US72 it was fetching before the war with Iran began. It's been swinging with uncertainty about when the war will allow crude to freely flow again from the Middle East to customers worldwide.
Corporate profits support stocks
On Wall Street, AutoZone rose 3.3% after the retailer reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected, though its revenue fell short. Strong profit reports are one of the main reasons the US stock market has reached the brink of its all-time high despite expensive oil and jitters about whether stocks in the artificial-intelligence industry shot too high.
Many companies are close to closing the books on their third quarter of the year, which ends with September. And analysts are forecasting companies in the S&P 500 will report overall growth of nearly 29% for the quarter from a year earlier, according to FactSet.
If they're right, it would be the third straight quarter of growth better than 25% for the index. And stock prices tend to follow the track of corporate profits over the long term.
Banks and energy stocks fall
On the losing end of Wall Street were several stocks of companies in the oil and gas industry, which were hurt by the drop in crude prices.
Banks also dropped, continuing their weak run since last week, when the Federal Reserve raised the overnight interest rate that it controls for the first time in three years. When the spread narrows between short-term interest rates and longer ones, banks come under pressure because they make profit off the difference.
JPMorgan Chase fell 3.4% and was one of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500.
The gap between short- and long-term yields in the bond market did not move much on Tuesday, and the 10-year Treasury yield edged down to 4.95% from 4.96% late on Monday.
All told, the S&P 500 inched down by 0.06 to 7,764.64 points. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 185.14 to 51,863.69, and the Nasdaq composite rose 122.18 to 27,244.28.
Global markets edge higher
In stock markets around the world, indices ticked higher across much of Europe and Asia. London's FTSE 100 was an outlier and dipped 0.3%.
Stocks rose 0.2% in Hong Kong and 0.1% in Shanghai after Alibaba unveiled new artificial intelligence chip technologies, including what it said was China's most powerful AI chip.
That comes just days ahead of a meeting between Chinese and US leaders at which competition to lead on AI technology is expected to be a major theme.
