Stock market news live updates: Stocks finish lower after volatile trading session

Stocks finished lower on Tuesday following a volatile trading session that saw the Nasdaq gain over 1% at its highs and the Dow ultimately lose more than 1%.

[Click here to read what's moving markets on Wednesday, August 3]

When the closing bell rang on Tuesday, the S&P 500 was down 0.66%, the Dow off 1.22%, and the Nasdaq down 0.16%.

Stocks opened Tuesday's session lower with traders citing rising U.S.-China tensions amid House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan as the source of market stress.

Stocks around the globe were lower overnight on Tuesday ahead of this trip, with Europe's major indexes red across the board as Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 2.3% and stocks in Shanghai lost over 2.2%. Japan's Nikkei fell 1.4% overnight.

Economic data out Tuesday on the labor market showed a slowdown in the number of jobs open as of June, with the latest Job Opening and Labor Turnover survey showing 10.7 million jobs were available at the start of the summer. This marked the fewest number of jobs open since September 2021.

Federal Reserve officials have in recent months talked about slowing the pace of job openings as a way to cool demand in the labor market and the broader economy without causing a surge in unemployment.

On the earnings front, Uber (UBER) shares rallied after the company reported a better-than-expected quarter across the board. Shares gained as much as xxxx

The company reported revenue of $8.1 billion on gross bookings of $29.1 billion. Revenue had been expected to come in at $7.4 billion. Adjusted EBITDA also beat estimates, totaling $364 million against expectations for $266 million. Uber also said it recorded $382 million in free cash flow during the second quarter.

Also on the earnings side, shares of Caterpillar (CAT) lost more than 5% on Tuesday after the industrial giant reported quarterly revenue that came in slightly light of Wall Street estimates.

From the department of market oddities, shares of Chinese tech firm AMTD IDEA Group (AMTD) were up as much as 300% on Tuesday as shares of AMTD Digital (HKD), a subsidiary of AMTD IDEA, rose as much as 250% and have gained more than 15,000% since going public last month.

In a statement out early Tuesday, AMTD Digital said: "During the period since our initial public offering, the Company noted significant volatility in our ADS price and, also observed some very active trading volume. To our knowledge, there are no material circumstances, events nor other matters relating to our Company’s business and operating activities since the IPO date."

The rally in the Nasdaq on Tuesday was also being driven by several heavily-battered high-flyers that have been market leaders during some of the recent rally from mid-June lows.

Names like Peloton (PTON), Coinbase (COIN), Roku (ROKU), Palantir (PLTR), and Virgin Galactic (SPCE) were all trading higher on Tuesday, with Peloton leading this group, gaining as much as 12.5% on no news.

On Monday, Bloomberg reported a clerical error by bankers at Barclays could result in some Peloton noteholders earning a more than 1,000% return on investments that had essentially gone bust.

The price of crude oil finished Tuesday little-changed at $94.25 a barrel as the price of gas in the U.S. has now fallen 17% since its mid-June peak to below $4.17 a gallon.

Patrick de Haan at GasBuddy said Monday the price of gas will likely fall below $4/gallon nationally within the next 10 days.

In crypto markets, bitcoin (BTC-USD) was down over 2% early Tuesday but stood near $23,000 as the closing bell rang on Wall Street. A broad move lower in crypto hit markets early Tuesday morning amid the risk off sentiment in financial markets.

Crypto markets were also under pressure following a late Monday hack of the Nomad protocol, which lost nearly all of its funds totaling about $200 million.

In individual stock news, shares of Pinterest (PINS) gained over 11% after activist investor Elliott Management confirmed a stake in the social media company that makes it Pinterest's largest shareholder.

Elliott also backed Pinterest's new CEO Bill Ready, calling Ready "the right leader to oversee Pinterest's next phase of growth."

This news overshadowed a quarterly report from Pinterest that showed a decline in users as social media players continue to struggle in a shifting digital ad market. Shares of Pinterest had gained as much as 19% in pre-market trading.

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