As investors digested earnings results while keeping a wary eye on the ongoing bloodshed in the Middle East, US stocks fell during early trading on Wednesday.
US stocks slip on earnings: Shortly after an attack on a hospital in the Gaza Strip, which the Hamas-run health ministry claims resulted in the deaths of at least 471 people, US Vice President Joe Biden visited Israel.
While Biden acknowledged on Wednesday that “it appears” the attack was the consequence of a misfired missile by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Israel and Hamas have both laid blame for the attack on the other.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.3 percent at 33,911.74 just before Wall Street trading started.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index was trading down 0.5 percent at 13,472.48 and the broad-based S&P 500 was down 0.4 percent at 4,354.77.
“Equity traders are really not very good at factoring in geopolitical events, such as the type that we’re seeing in the Middle East, because the cause and effect is not particularly clear,” said Steve Sosnick from Interactive Brokers to AFP.
In the end, he concluded, “stock markets and equity markets do have to worry about what’s happening in bond markets and what’s happening in commodities markets, notably oil.
“They are all uneasy, and as a result, the market is also uneasy,” the author says.
United Airlines, one of the individual stocks, saw its share price drop by more than 7% following the release of third-quarter earnings.
The US airline expressed concern that the confrontation would result in a protracted halt to travel to Tel Aviv, which would hurt its financial performance.
Following the release of poor third-quarter earnings, shares of US bank Morgan Stanley fell more than 5%.