Trade optimism, energy stocks lift Dow; tech slide hits Nasdaq

By Shreyashi Sanyal

(Reuters) - The Nasdaq fell on Wednesday, weighed down by a drop in Apple and other companies on fears of further regulation, while a rise in energy stocks and a report of fresh U.S.-China trade talks helped keep the S&P afloat and boosted the Dow Industrials.

Washington has proposed a new round of trade talks with Beijing before the Trump administration implements additional tariffs on Chinese imports, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The trade-sensitive industrials sector gained on the news and was last up 0.56 percent. Boeing rose 2.6 percent and Caterpillar 0.9 percent.

The markets had gotten off to a weak start as shares of six major web and internet service companies, including Apple, slid after their executives were scheduled to detail their consumer data privacy practices to a U.S. Senate panel on Sept. 26.

Apple was down 0.6 percent. Twitter, Alphabet and Amazon.com, among the companies to testify, were between flat to down 4 percent. Facebook, not among the six companies to testify, was down 1.6 percent.

Apple was trading higher premarket, ahead of an event at 1 p.m. ET (1700 GMT) where the company is expected to launch new iPhone models as well as upgrades of other products.

"Headlines like the Senate hearing does add this element of regulatory risk to Apple and Amazon which is what could be driving them lower right now," said Mark Heppenstall, chief investment officer at Penn Mutual Asset Management in Horsham, Pennsylvania.

The S&P technology sector fell -0.60 percent, the most among the 11 major S&P 500 sectors.

Also helping boost the market was the energy sector, which jumped 0.99 percent as oil prices gained due to growing concerns over global supply. [O/R]

At 11:43 a.m. ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 134.31 points, or 0.52 percent, at 26,105.37, the S&P 500 was up 1.13 points, or 0.04 percent, at 2,889.02 and the Nasdaq Composite was down 39.50 points, or 0.50 percent, at 7,932.98.

The Philadelphia Semiconductor index was down -2.13 percent after Goldman Sachs became the latest brokerage to warn of lower prices for memory chips due to an oversupply of DRAM and NAND chips.

Micron declined 5.2 percent, the most on the S&P. Chip equipment makers were hit the hardest, falling in a range of Applied Materials' 2.3 percent drop and Entegris's 4.9 percent slide.

Gilead Sciences rose 2.2 percent after its rheumatoid arthritis drug, being developed jointly with Galapagos NV, met the main goal of a study.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.32-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 1.51-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P index recorded 27 new 52-week highs and six new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 58 new highs and 69 new lows.

(Reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Shounak Dasgupta)