Sino-US Jitters Weigh On Flat Wall Street

Nvidia Corp rose 3.2 percent and Intel Corp 3.1 percent, making technology the only sector on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to rise, with all others declining. Declining shares outnumbered gainers on the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange.

Biden told a group of US senators in a meeting to discuss the need to upgrade US infrastructure that the United States must raise its game in the face of the challenge from China.

The warning about China and Democrat plans to include raising the minimum wage to US$15 in a US$1.9 trillion stimulus package showed headwinds for investors could be on the rise, said Ed Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA in New York.

"Markets are starting to get a little bit nervous over the relations between the West and China," Moya said.

Biden's first call late Wednesday with President Xi Jinping "resurfaced all of the difficulties that we're going to face this year in addition to the pandemic," he said.

The Democrats also are not in agreement on where they stand on the minimum wage, he said. "This is dragging out stimulus talks."

Mastercard rose 2.6 percent after the credit-card company said it was planning to offer support for some cryptocurrencies on its network this year, joining a string of big-ticket firms that have pledged similar support.

Bank of New York Mellon advanced 0.9 percent after saying it had formed a new unit to help clients hold, transfer and issue digital assets, sending Bitcoin to an all-time high of US$48,696.

The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits were 793,000 last week, compared to 812,000 in the prior week, but they are well below the record 6.867 million reported last March when the pandemic hit the United States.

Wall Street's main indexes have hit record highs recently on prospects of the US$1.9 trillion relief bill that aims to jump start the US economy, while a largely better-than-expected earnings season also has bolstered sentiment.

Analysts now expect fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 firms to grow 3 percent, versus a 10.3 percent decline forecast at the beginning of January, per Refinitiv data. Stocks are trading with high multiples, raising fears the market is overvalued.

"The market is certainly fairly valued. I don't see the overall market as horribly overvalued," said David Trainer, chief executive of New Constructs, a research firm in Nashville, Tennessee "There are pockets of stocks, we call them micro bubbles, that are extremely overvalued."

The tech sector and semiconductors hit record highs, while economy-linked energy and industrials took a back seat after being in the spotlight this year.

The S&P 500 gained or 0.17 percent, to 3,916 and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.38 percent, to 14,026. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.02 percent, to 31,431. (Reuters)