US benchmark equity indexes displayed a mixed performance after midday on Tuesday, as investors eagerly awaited the official consumer inflation data for August, set to be released on Wednesday. The Nasdaq Composite saw a gain of 0.4%, reaching an intraday value of 16,944.5. Conversely, the S&P 500 experienced a slight increase of 0.1%, climbing to 5,477.3, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 0.4%, settling at 40,669.6.
Among the various sectors, real estate emerged as the biggest gainer, while energy faced the steepest declines. In broader economic news, analysts expect that government data to be released on Wednesday will indicate a 0.2% rise in US consumer inflation on a sequential basis, which translates to an annual increase of 2.6% for the previous month.
Investors are also looking forward to the official producer prices report for August, which is scheduled for release on Thursday. The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) released their latest survey, highlighting a decline in small business optimism across the US. The waning confidence stems from low expectations in sales volume, with inflation emerging as the primary concern for business owners. From a bond market perspective, the US two-year yield saw a reduction of 6.3 basis points, dropping to 3.60%, while the yield on the 10-year bond fell by 4.9 basis points to 3.65% intraday. In commodities, West Texas Intermediate crude oil experienced a significant slump of 4.3%, retreating to $65.79 a barrel.
This decline follows the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) adjusting its 2024 and 2025 global oil demand projections downward. The cartel has now revised its expectations for global economic growth to be 3% this year, a slight increase from the previously anticipated 2.9%. Turning to company-specific news, Oracle ($ORCL) saw its shares surge nearly 12%, making it the best-performing stock on the S&P 500.
This remarkable increase follows the software company's announcement of its fiscal first-quarter results late Monday, which outperformed Wall Street analysts' estimates, particularly due to robust performance in its cloud services. In a notable partnership, Oracle and Amazon.com's ($AMZN) Amazon Web Services unveiled a new service that allows customers to access the Oracle Autonomous Database on dedicated infrastructure alongside Oracle Exadata Database Service within Amazon's cloud-computing platform.
Following this announcement, Amazon’s shares rose by 2.7% intraday on Tuesday, positioning it as the top gainer on the Dow and among the leaders on the S&P 500. However, not all companies had a favorable day; Hewlett Packard Enterprise ($HPE) experienced the largest decline on the S&P 500, with shares down by 7%.
The company had disclosed that it is launching a public offering of $1.35 billion worth of its series C mandatory convertible preferred shares. Additionally, companies including GameStop ($GME), Dave & Buster's Entertainment ($PLAY), and Petco Health and Wellness ($WOOF) are slated to report their latest quarterly financial results after the closing bell on Tuesday. On the commodities front, gold prices inched up by 0.4%, reaching $2,542.60 per troy ounce, while silver saw a slight decline of 0.1%, settling at $28.63 per ounce..