Trade Tension Pushes Wall Street Into The Red

Wall Street's four-session winning streak ended with a thud on Tuesday amid revived worries over Sino-US trade relations and a sense the January rally is fading.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped finished down 1.2 percent at 24,404.

The broad-based S&P 500 dropped 1.4 percent to 2,633, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index tumbled 1.9 percent to 7,020.

Stocks were in the red the entire session, a shift from the trend since late December, when investors loaded up on equities after a sell-off earlier that month.

But many analysts now feel the market could be primed for another pullback after four weeks of nearly unbroken gains.

Wall Street had started Tuesday in a gloomy mood a day after the International Monetary Fund trimmed its global growth forecasts, citing US-China trade uncertainties, Brexit and other factors.

Adding to that unease on Tuesday were afternoon reports in The Financial Times and CNBC that the United States had rejected Beijing's offer to hold a preparatory meeting in Washington ahead of next week's high-level trade talks.

The White House denied the report shortly before the closing bell, lifting stocks a bit but not enough to push them into positive territory. (AFP)