Tech stocks pulled Wall Street lower Tuesday while gold and silver rebounded after a late-january surge that abruptly stalled last week, market reporting showed. The S&P 500 fell 0.8%, pulling further away from an all-time high set last week, and the Nasdaq composite sank 1.4% as investors weighed losses among large technology companies and software names seen as tied to artificial intelligence. The metals market also reflected a reversal: gold and silver rebounded after their recent sell-offs in what traders described as a shift in momentum around the dollar and interest-rate expectations.
Big Tech weighed on the indexes, with Nvidia down 2.8% and Microsoft down 2.9%. AP reported that declines in software companies and other firms viewed as potential AI challengers also pushed the day’s broader declines, including ServiceNow, which fell 7% and brought its loss for the year so far to 28.3%. With those moves dragging the S&P 500, the index recorded its fourth loss in the last five trading days even though more than half the stocks in the benchmark rose.
Some individual stocks provided counterpoints to the tech weakness. Palantir Technologies climbed 6.8% after reporting a bigger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected, and its forecast called for 61% revenue growth this year, topping analysts’ expectations.
Other company results and corporate actions also moved shares. AP said PayPal fell 20.3% after reporting weaker results for the latest quarter than analysts expected and naming a new CEO, adding that the company said “the pace of change and execution” over the last two years “was not in line” with the board of directors’ expectations. Pfizer shares fell 3.3% even with a quarter that topped analyst expectations for profit, after the company’s 2026 forecast range’s midpoint came in below what analysts expected.
In the financial sector, Banco Santander’s U.S.-listed shares fell 6.4% after it said it will buy Webster Financial in a cash-and-stock deal valued at roughly $12.3 billion, while Webster Bank’s parent rallied 9%. On the gainers side, AP reported that PepsiCo rose 4.9% after its latest-quarter profit and revenue nudged past analysts’ expectations and it said it would cut prices this year on Lay’s, Doritos and other snacks to win back customers.
AP also reported that DaVita rose 21.2% after the provider of dialysis and other health care services delivered a better-than-expected quarterly profit. In the bond market, the 10-year Treasury yield eased to 4.26% from 4.29% late Monday.
Gold and silver’s bounce came after sharp declines last week that followed a yearlong rally driven by demand for safer assets amid concerns including tariffs, a weaker U.S. dollar and heavy government debt loads. AP said gold had roughly doubled over 12 months before its momentum halted last week: gold slid from near $5,600 to below $4,500 on Monday and silver plunged 31.4% on Friday. Many traders told AP that the change in momentum was tied to expectations that President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Reserve would keep interest rates high to fight inflation, though AP reported that some traders disagreed on that explanation.
Over the last year, gold and silver had risen as investors looked to park cash in havens, and AP said the sell-off accelerated after the prices climbed so quickly that “simple gravity” returned. Barclays strategists were cited by AP as saying that the reversal “underscored how stretched anti-USD positioning had become.”
Elsewhere, markets abroad bounced after the prior day’s sharp losses, AP reported. South Korea’s Kospi surged 6.8% for its best performance since the early-2020 COVID crash and recovery days, with Samsung Electronics rising 11.4%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 3.9%, and stocks rose in Shanghai and Hong Kong, while Europe’s CAC 40 edged down by less than 0.1%.