NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is sinking again on Wednesday following mixed profit reports from several big banks.
The S&P 500 fell 0.7% and was on track for a second straight drop after setting its all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 182 points, or 0.4%, as of 9:45 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1% lower.
Some nervousness was hanging over financial markets. Crude prices added to their big recent gains as protests
in Iran could lead to disruptions in the flow of oil. Gold’s price rose nearly 1% toward further records, while Treasury yields edged lower as investors looked for investments that are considered safer to hold.
On Wall Street, Wells Fargo helped pull the U.S. stock market lower after falling 4.6%. The San Francisco-based bank reported weaker profit and revenue for the latest quarter than expected, with analysts citing lower trading fees and other miscellaneous items.
Bank of America fell 3.8% despite reporting stronger a profit than analysts expected. Citigroup, which is in the midst of a turnaround under Chair and CEO Jane Fraser, swung between gains and losses following its own profit report and was most recently down 1.1%.
Companies across industries need to report strong growth in profits to justify how high their stock prices have run recently. Analysts are looking for businesses across the S&P 500 to report earnings per share for the final three months of 2025 that are roughly 8% higher than a year earlier, according to FactSet.
Biogen tumbled 6% for one of the market's sharpest losses after the biotech company said it expects to take a hit to its profit for the fourth quarter of 2025 due to research and development expenses and other costs that it acquired.
Keeping the S&P 500 from steeper losses were Exxon Mobil and other oil companies. Exxon Mobil rose 1.9%, and ConocoPhillips rallied 3.2% as the price of a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude added 0.9% to bring its gain for the year above 7%.
Iran is a member of the OPEC group that helps set oil prices, and protests there could lead to disruptions in production and squeeze supplies of crude.
In the bond market, Treasury yields inched lower following some mixed reports on the U.S. economy.
One said that shoppers spent more at U.S. retailers in November than economists expected. That could be an encouraging signal about the main engine of the U.S. economy, but economists pointed to some concerning signals were underneath the surface. Sales of big-ticket items fell from the prior year, noted Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management.
A separate report said prices rose modestly at the U.S. wholesale level in November. It followed a report on Tuesday that said inflation at the U.S. consumer level was close last month to economists’ expectations, though it remained above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury ticked down to 4.15% from 4.18% late Tuesday.
In stock markets abroad, Japan’s Nikkei 225 rallied 1.5% to another record expectations grew that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi may call general elections soon.
Indexes were mixed elsewhere. Stocks rose 0.6% in Hong Kong but fell 0.3% in Shanghai after a report showed China’s trade surplus surged 20% in 2025 to a record despite President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
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AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.
