NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks dipped early Wednesday as international tensions over Syria and North Korea sapped investor enthusiasm.
The early declines came as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in Moscow as the two countries publicly spar over Syria.
On North Korea, Chinese leader Xi Jinping urged Donald Trump in a phone call to peacefully resolve tensions over North Korea’s nuclear program.
Trump on Tuesday suggested on Twitter that the US would intervene if China did not do more to contain North Korea.
About 15 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 20,632.88, down 0.1 percent.
The broad-based S&P 500 also lost 0.1 percent to 2,350.54, as did the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index which shed 0.1 percent to 5,863.86.
The US economic calendar has been relatively quiet thus far this week, but activity will pick up Thursday with a report on March retail sales and earnings from JPMorgan Chaser and other banks.
Delta Air Lines shot up 3.1 percent as it reported better-than-expected first-quarter earnings and projected revenue per passenger mile would rise one to three percent in the second quarter.
BlackBerry Limited surged 18.5 percent as it announced it won $814.9 million in an arbitration ruling from Qualcomm on royalty overpayments.
Qualcomm shed 1.8 percent.
Tractor Supply fell 6.1 percent as it projected that comparable store sales declined 2.2 percent in the first quarter, down from the gain of 4.9 percent in the year-ago period. (APP)