Stocks close lower, Nvidia predictions weigh on tech sector

Stocks (^GSPC, ^DJI) closed Tuesday lower across the board as investors await Nvidia's (NVDA) earnings due out Wednesday. The tech-heavy Nasdaq (^IXIC) especially lagged, pulling back ahead of Nvidia's fourth-quarter results. Among sectors, consumer staples was the lone gainer, lifted by Walmart's (WMT) strong results driven by sales growth.

Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre breaks down the details.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Angel Smith

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: So let's do a quick check of the markets here, find out where things are settling out. On the first trading day of this holiday shortened trading week, we see the major averages-- well, at least in the case of the NASDAQ, finishing up a bit off the lows, but still down by nearly 1%, 9/10 of 1% to be exact. The S&P 500 down 6/10. And the Dow down nearly 1/5 of 1% or about 63 points here today.

Definitely a lot to do with what's going on with technology, as the anticipation for Nvidia earnings after the bell tomorrow may be curdling a little bit or people taking a little bit of a step back, Josh.

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah. Nvidia down more than 4% today's trade. Tough day for stocks with tech underperforming, the broader market. Jared Blikre here with a look back at the day's action. Jared.

JARED BLIKRE: That's right, Josh. Tech, not only in the large caps but also down the line to the small caps. Russell 2000 by the way, down 1.4%. That is worse than the NASDAQ, which was down 9/10 of a percent. And looking at the sector action in the large caps, only staples finishes the day in the green. And that's a Walmart story. That has to do with the earnings that they announce before the bell this morning. So did Home Depot, by the way. See if we have time for that in a second. But staples, the only sector finishing in the green.

Among the large-caps, tech is the biggest loser, down 1%, followed by consumer discretionary and energy. All of those underperforming. When you take a look at the NASDAQ 100, you can see-- I'm not going to call this carnage, but you can see some of the damage being done here. Nvidia, the flagship AI stock, that's down 4.35%. AMD down a little bit more, 4.7%. Tesla down 3%.

And it's not just large-cap tech, I was mentioning small-cap tech, too. And a lot of the disruption names are feeling some weakness today. Here we go, Roblox down 3 and 1/2%. DraftKings down 7%. Twilio down 3%. List goes on. Not a whole lot of green on this screen right here.

When we do take a look at the Dow, we see some winners. Walmart finishing at a record high, I mentioned the earnings before. Coca-Cola also up about 2%. Intel up 2%. But not a whole lot of other dark green that I'm seeing. And then in terms of industrials, we're seeing Caterpillar down 2 and 1/2%. And then Disney down 2% as well.

When I take a look at some of the leaders, not a whole lot of green here. Seeing some green and credit both high quality and low quality. That would be high yield and low yield. Also GBTC, that's the crypto the crypto ETF. That is my proxy for the crypto trade. That's done OK today, a little bit in the emerging markets. But for the most part, things getting a little bit down to smoked. If you take a look at the cannabis ETF, that's doing even worse than the ARK ETF, down almost 4%, guys.