Wall St slips in choppy trading ahead of inflation data, Dow dips

Wall Street's main indexes fell in volatile trading on Tuesday dragged down by banks and some megacap growth stocks as investors fretted over prospects of aggressive monetary tightening and slowing economic growth.

Eight of the 11 major S&P sectors declined, led by a 1.3% fall in financial stocks .SPSY and a 2.4% dip in real-estate shares .SPLRCR.

Banks .SPXBK dropped 2.3%, with JP Morgan Chase & Co JPM.N down 2.4% to weigh the most on the S&P 500 index .SPX.

After rising as much as 2.8% earlier in the session, the tech-heavy Nasdaq .IXIC was flat.

Shares of Apple Inc AAPL.O, Google owner-Alphabet Inc GOOGL.O and Microsoft Corp MSFT.O rose more than 1% each, while Amazon.com AMZN.O and Tesla Inc TSLA.O fell 0.6% and 0.2%, respectively.

At 11:54 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was down 179.59 points, or 0.56%, at 32,066.11, the S&P 500 .SPX was down 16.04 points, or 0.40%, at 3,975.20, and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC was down 4.96 points, or 0.04%, at 11,618.29.

"We all saw this rally this morning ... there's no way it was going to hold ahead of the CPI data as nobody wants to be long in case that (reading) comes in hot. So you're going to see a lot of nervousness ahead of this number," said Dennis Dick, a trader at Bright Trading LLC in Las Vegas.

Data on Wednesday is expected to show consumer prices increased at a slower pace in April, with investors looking for clues on peaking inflation and the path of future rate hikes.

Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said the U.S. economy will experience turbulence from the Federal Reserve's efforts to bring down inflation running at more than three times above its goal and recent volatility in the stock market would not deter policymakers. Read full story

The S&P 500 index .SPX and the Nasdaq .IXIC have dropped over 16% and 25%, respectively, this year due to the Ukraine conflict, China's COVID-19 lockdowns roiling global supply chains and rising bond yields as traders adjust to higher U.S. interest rates.

"The uncertainty around the Fed and the geopolitical situation leads me to believe that people are going to end up being a little bit more cautious," said Robert Gilliland, managing director at Concenture Wealth Management.

"The markets are trying to figure out what the world will look like in three, six and twelve months from now. I do think we've got to go back down before we start another leg up."

Among other stocks, Novavax Inc NVAX.O slid 6.6% after the vaccine maker revealed a sharp drop in first-quarter COVID-19 research funding and said it shipped less than a fourth of the total vaccine deliveries slated for 2022. Read full story

Peloton Interactive Inc PTON.O tumbled 13.4% as the fitness equipment maker warned the business was "thinly capitalized" after it posted a 23.6% slide in quarterly revenue. Read full story

Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 1.98-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and a 1.75-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P index recorded one new 52-week high and 61 new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 17 new highs and 939 new lows.