S&P 500 notches record-high close; GM slumps as tariffs bite

The S&P 500 eked out a record-high close on Tuesday, following steep losses in General Motors and a gain in Tesla as investors focused on recent and upcoming quarterly reports and watched for signs of progress in US trade discussions.

GM tumbled 8.1% after the automaker reported a USD 1 billion hit from tariffs to its quarterly results, adding more fuel to investor concerns about US President Donald Trump’s global trade policy. Shares of Ford Motor fell about 1%.

Tesla climbed 1.1% a day before its quarterly report, while Alphabet, also reporting on Wednesday, rose 0.65%.

Optimism about heavy spending on artificial intelligence has underpinned a rally in Wall Street’s most valuable companies, with the S&P 500 trading around record highs.

“The market is consolidating recent gains and is in a bit of a holding pattern with some huge catalysts over the next week or two, including the August 1 tariff deadline and a lot of important Magnificent Seven earnings,” said Ross Mayfield, an investment strategy analyst at Baird.

Other Big Tech stocks lost ground, with Meta Platforms and Microsoft both losing about 1%.

Shares of RTX dropped 1.6% after the aerospace and defense giant took a hit from Trump’s trade war despite strong demand for its engines and aftermarket services.

Lockheed Martin tumbled almost 11% after its quarterly profit plunged by about 80%.

US trade policy remains a major point of uncertainty for investors and companies as Trump’s self-imposed August 1 deadline for many countries to reach agreements with the White House approaches.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he would meet his Chinese counterpart next week to discuss an extension to the August 12 deadline set for tariffs on imports from China.

Other trade negotiations appeared stalled, with optimism for a breakthrough deal with India waning and EU officials weighing countermeasures against the United States.

The S&P 500 climbed 0.06% to end the session at 6,309.62 points.

The Nasdaq declined 0.39% to 20,892.69 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.40% to 44,502.44 points.

Nine of the 11 S&P 500 sector indexes rose, led by healthcare, up 1.9%, followed by a 1.78% gain in real estate.

Volume on US exchanges was relatively heavy, with 18.8 billion shares traded, compared with an average of 17.7 billion shares over the previous 20 sessions.

Philip Morris slumped 8.43% after reporting second-quarter revenue below expectations, as shipments of its ZYN nicotine pouches disappointed investors.

Analysts on average expected S&P 500 companies to report a 7% increase in earnings for the second quarter, with technology heavyweights driving much of that gain, according to LSEG.

After last week’s mixed economic data, traders have all but ruled out an interest-rate cut from the US Federal Reserve at next week’s policy meeting. They now see about a 60% chance of a reduction in September, according to the CME’s FedWatch tool.

Advancing issues outnumbered falling ones within the S&P 500 by a 4.3-to-1 ratio.

The S&P 500 posted 21 new highs and 1 new low; the Nasdaq recorded 73 new highs and 41 new lows.

(Reporting by Nikhil Sharma and Pranav Kashyap in Bengaluru, and by Noel Randewich in San Francisco; Editing by Pooja Desai and Matthew Lewis)