S&P 500 ends flat as Johnson & Johnson falls 5.7%

The S&P 500 closed at 7,805.37 on Tuesday, down 1.87 points, or 0.02%, and finished 0.5% under its 52-week high of 7,844.52. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 180 points, or 0.35%, to 51,670.1.

The Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.15%, to 27,204.38, and the Nasdaq-100 fell 0.3%.

The State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF, ASPY, was unchanged. The Invesco AQQQ Trust, Series 1, AQQQ, fell 0.3%.

Johnson & Johnson and reported before the open, as did four large banks — Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo — all of which were trading lower by the close.

Johnson & Johnson fell 5.7%, to $248.61 after sales in its device business missed estimates, even though it raised its 2026 forecast.

MedTech, J&J's device business, grew 2.5% to $8.64 billion, but fell short of the $8.71 billion analysts expected, Benzinga reported. Chief Financial Officer Joe Wolk also said the Firefly Bio and Sail Biomedicines deals would cut 2027 adjusted earnings by about $1.36 a share.”

Reported earnings were $0.09 a share.

Chief Financial Officer Joe Wolk said in prepared remarks that a $5.5 billion agreement to resolve those claims of ovarian cancer related to the company's talcum powder product, announced in July, is reflected in this quarter's results. The settlement takes effect only if plaintiffs holding at least 95% of the roughly 76,000 remaining ovarian claims sign on. Wolk said participation was trending toward that level.

Johnson & Johnson also said in July that buying Firefly would bring an in-process research charge of about $1 billion in the third quarter.

Adjusted earnings, which still include the Firefly and Sail deals, were $2.59 a share, ahead of estimates. Sales rose 5.9%, to $25.4 billion, and the company raised its 2026 adjusted-earnings guidance by 6 cents, to $11.10 a share.

Operational sales in MedTech, the device business, grew 2.5%. Wolk told Yahoo Finance that a UK study had questioned the benefit of the company's heart pumps in some procedures, and that budgets in the Middle East were shifting from health care toward defense.

The State Street Health Care Select Sector SPDR ETF, AXLV, fell 1.4%. Johnson & Johnson is about 10% of the fund, and Eli Lilly, its largest holding, fell 1.4%. Biotech funds finished lower across the board, by a median 2.1%.

Caterpillar fell 3.3%, to $772.78, a larger point drop than Johnson & Johnson's decline, and it was the largest drag on the State Street SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust, ADIA.

Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo all closed lower for the day. Citigroup and Wells Fargo beat analyst expectations on profit, while JPMorgan missed, according to Reuters reporting.

Goldman earned $17.01 a share, far above the $13.02 analysts expected, according to LSEG. Revenue was $18.68 billion, against $16.71 billion expected. Goldman rose more than 4% before the open and closed down 0.2%.

JPMorgan reported $5.57 a share, against $5.85, on $50.2 billion of revenue. It was up as much as 3% and closed down 0.9%.

Citigroup earned $2.85 a share, against $2.66, on $23.85 billion of revenue, and fell 5.6%.

Wells Fargo earned $1.87 a share, against $1.85, on revenue of $21.87 billion, short of the $22.31 billion analysts had expected, Reuters reported. The stock fell 3.1%.

The State Street Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF, AXLF, fell 0.4%. Visa and Mastercard, large holdings in that fund, rose.

Away from the reports, the State Street Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF, AXLE, rose 1.8%, more than any of the other main sector funds.

South Korea's Kospi fell 5.5%, to 6,035.35. It had already fallen 3.6% on Monday and is down 13.8% over five sessions.

SK hynix fell 10.1% in Seoul and Samsung Electronics fell 7.4%. Bloomberg reported that the selling followed a weekend claim from China's ChangXin Memory Technologies, which said it would bring a denser server-memory chip to market by the end of the year, and remarks from Broadcom's chief executive.

"A lot of investors have no clue what they are investing in," Broadcom chief executive Hock Tan said Monday at an event in Singapore. They "set very extreme expectations only to find out that it's almost like they are in a casino."

Ha SeokKeun, chief investment officer at Eugene Asset Management, told Bloomberg that uncertainty over whether the memory upcycle lasts into 2028 appears to be weighing on the valuations of Korean chipmakers.

Memory shares fell less in New York. Micron fell 3.6%, and the US-listed shares of SK hynix fell 3.2%.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF, ASMH, fell 0.5%. The iShares MSCI South Korea ETF, CEWY, fell 2.1%.