How the market did
All three major indexes finished Tuesday slightly in the red, but none of them fell by much. The S&P 500 dropped 0.02%, which is about as close to flat as it gets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.35%, and the Nasdaq Composite closed down 0.15%.
A move this small in the S&P 500 basically means buyers and sellers were evenly matched. No single force was strong enough to push the whole market in one direction.
One headline worth noting: a Reuters report pointed out that even though the S&P 500 has had a strong run this year, around 4 in 10 stocks in the index are actually down on the year. A broad index can look healthy while many individual stocks are quietly struggling underneath.
What moved stocks today
Bank earnings, which are profit reports that banks publish every few months to show how much money they made, were front and center today. Goldman Sachs was among the banks that posted strong results, and that gave a boost to those stocks specifically.
Chip stocks, meaning companies that design or make semiconductors, fell today and dragged the Nasdaq lower. The headlines do not point to a single clear reason for the drop, so the exact cause is not confirmed yet.
Oil prices also got attention, with crude trading above $105 a barrel. Higher oil prices can be a mixed signal: they can mean the global economy is busy and using a lot of energy, but they also raise costs for businesses that rely on fuel or shipping.