By Yasin Ebrahim
Investing.com – The S&P 500 eased from record highs on Tuesday as sentiment on trade was knocked by a report the U.S. will keep tariffs on Chinese goods through the 2020 U.S. election in November.
The S&P 500 lost 0.15%, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.24% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.11%.
Existing tariffs on imported Chinese goods are likely to remain in place until after the U.S. election, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter said.
Washington will review Beijing's compliance with the trade agreement no sooner than 10 months after the signing of the phase one agreement on Wednesday, according to the report.
The decision to keep the tariffs in place would allow the White House to reimpose levies if it determines that Beijing has not lived up to its end of the agreement.
Sentiment on trade soured somewhat forcing stocks to give up their earnings-infused gains following mostly bullish reports from major Wall Street banks.
JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) and Citigroup (NYSE:C) ended the day 1% higher as both banks beat earnings estimates from Investing.com thanks to a rebound in fourth-quarter trading activity.
Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), however, slipped 5% after its earnings fell short of estimates.
Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) surged 3% after delivering blowout earnings, underpinned by lower fuel prices and higher demand for travel.
Boeing (NYSE:BA) rose 0.6% despite posting the lowest orders in 30 years as the grounding of its 737 Max continued to weigh on performance.
Following a recent streak of gains, tech ended the day in the red, led by weakness in Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL).
Apple fell about 1% as Atlantic Equities downgraded the tech stalwart to underweight from neutral and raised doubt about the current optimism over Apple's upcoming launch of 5G featured iPhones.