Stock market today: Live updates

U.S. Treasury yields were higher on Tuesday as the Federal Reserve’s meeting is due to kick off and investors considered the outlook for interest rate decisions from central banks in major global economies that are expected this week.

At 4:27 a.m. ET, the 10-year Treasury was trading over two basis points higher at 3.8845%. The 2-year Treasury yield was last up more than two basis points to 4.8619%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index surged more than 4% on Tuesday, led by real estate stocks rebounding after China vowed more support for its beleaguered property sector.

Real estate developer Longfor Group jumped almost 20% and was the biggest gainer on the index, while property management firm Country Garden Services Holdings surged 17.54%.

Hong Kong tech names were also part of the top gainers on the index, with the Hang Seng Tech index climbing 4.57% and led by electric vehicle makers. Chinese EV maker Xpeng saw a 12.75% gain, while Nio climbed 9.79%.

Earnings were the main driver of individual share price action in Europe on Tuesday.

Unilever shares climbed 5% in early trade to lead the Stoxx 600 after the British consumer goods company beat analyst expectations to report a 7.9% rise in underlying second-quarter sales.

At the bottom of the European blue chip index, Dassault Systemes fell 5% after its second-quarter earnings report, in which the French software company reported a slowdown in growth in its 3D and cloud businesses.

— Elliot Smith

The pan-European Stoxx 600 index hovered around the flatline in early trade, with mining stocks jumping 2.8% while healthcare stocks fell 0.8%.

South Korea’s gross domestic product grew 0.9% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2023, according to advance estimates.

This was unchanged from the 0.9% seen in the first quarter, and beat the 0.8% estimate by economists polled by Reuters.

On a quarter to quarter basis, South Korea’s GDP grew 0.6%, the largest quarterly growth seen since the second quarter of 2022.

— Lim Hui Jie

It’s early in the second quarter earnings reporting season but, so far, the majority of both U.S. and European companies are beating analyst estimates but the performance of their stocks is lagging, according to JPMorgan.

“Out of early reports, with 70 S&P 500 results and 90 in Europe, the majority are beating the consensus projections,” Mislav Matejka, head of global and European equity strategy at JP Morgan, said in a note to clients early Monday. “The sample set is relatively small, but the stock price reaction to the beats is worse than typical.”

Moreover, JPMorgan looked at companies issuing profit warnings ahead of second quarter earnings, and stocks within that group are down 10% or more, the exception being some energy and chemical stocks, probably because of their poor first half performance entering July.

Bottom line, JPMorgan doesn’t expect second quarter earnings to give the market much of a boost compared with the first quarter, for a couple of reasons. “Stock price reactions in general could be more muted this time, or at least any positive momentum might not have legs,” Matejka wrote. “Ahead of Q1, sentiment and positioning were cautious, but the equity market was strong coming into Q2 reporting season, suggesting buyside expectations are more elevated, even as analyst projections are subdued. Also, the question is whether the guidances will be raised on the back of quarterly beats, as there was some loss of momentum as we moved through the quarter, and China dataflow continues to disappoint.”

— Scott Schnipper, Michael Bloom

U.S. stock futures opened little-changed Monday.

Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed just 5 points, or 0.01%. Meanwhile, S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures ticked up 0.02% and 0.03%, respectively.

— Hakyung Kim