Stocks - S&P Slumps as China's Rare-Earth Threat Buries Shares

Investing.com - U.S. stocks tumbled Wednesday as the U.S.-China trade war intensified after Beijing signaled it was ready to retaliate against Washington by halting exports of rare-earth metals.

The S&P 500 slumped 0.69%. The Nasdaq Composite fell 0.79%, and the Dow plunged 0.87%.

China is "seriously" mulling a ban on exports of rare-earth exports to the U.S. and may also implement other countermeasures, the editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a newspaper associated with China's Communist Party, said in a tweet.

A ban on exports of rare-earth metals, 17 vital commodities used in production across a number of U.S. sectors, including oil refining, electronics and the glass industry, will likely trigger a response from Washington and prolong the trade war between the two nations.

Trade-sensitive stocks like Boeing (NYSE:BA), Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) and 3M (NYSE:MMM) reflected the jitters on trade, closing lower on the day. Boeing, off 1.7%, trimmed 41 points from the Dow.

Energy stocks, meanwhile, added to losses from a day earlier as oil prices settled modestly lower. Investors weighed the impact on prices of a prolonged trade war against ongoing tensions in the Middle East and OPEC output cuts.

With the prospect of tit-for-tat tariffs between Beijing and Washington on the horizon once again, U.S. government bond yields extended their losses, exacerbating a key inversion - shorter-term rates rising above longer-term rates - in the curve, stoking fears of a recession.

The inverse spread between the 3-Month and 10-Year Treasury yields, the most important part of the yield curve, is at its widest since the financial crisis.

If there was any good news out of the day's declines it was that, at the close, the indexes had reclaimed nearly half of their losses at their worst levels. Still, the indexes' declines were their fourth in five days. The Dow is off 6.2% so far in May with the S&P 500 down 5.5% and the Nasdaq down 6.8%.

The FAANG stocks (Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Netflix and Google) also swung out of favor, with Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) leading the decline, dragging broader tech deeper into the red, as investors reined in their bullish bets on growth stocks.

Consumer discretionaries were also under pressure amid a decline in retailers, led by 31% slump in Canada Goose Holdings (NYSE:GOOS) after the outdoor apparel company delivered mixed earnings and downbeat guidance.

In other company news, Cypress Semiconductor (NASDAQ:CY) surged 12% on a Bloomberg report that the chipmaker will explore a potential sale after attracting suitors.

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The political front also soured sentiment on risk assets after Special Counsel Robert Mueller, summarizing the findings of the report into Russian interference into the 2016 U.S. election, said that "if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so." That prompted calls from Democrats to impeach President Donald Trump.

Top S&P 500 Gainers and Losers Today:

Helmerich and Payne (NYSE:HP), CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL) and Deere & Company (NYSE:DE) were among the top S&P 500 gainers for the session.

Capri Holdings (NYSE:CPRI), L Brands (NYSE:LB) and PVH (NYSE:PVH) were among the worst S&P 500 performers of the session.