UKX FTSE 100 Index

By Lauren Almeida and Anna Isaac 

U.S. stocks fell Thursday after a string of disappointing earnings sent shares of technology companies sliding.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 69 points, or 0.2%, to 27150 shortly after the opening bell. The S&P 500 dropped 0.1% and the Nasdaq Composite declined 0.3%.

With few major economic reports scheduled for release this week, investors have turned their attention to corporate earnings, which have shown U.S. companies on uneven footing.

Shares in Netflix fell 9.5% after the streaming giant said its number of subscribers in the U.S. declined for the first time in nearly a decade. The downbeat report sent shares of peer Roku, which creates streaming-media devices, down 0.3%.

Shares of eBay rose 6.3% after the online marketplace raised its profit outlook and notched better-than-expected quarterly results. Meanwhile, Qualcomm dropped 0.7% after the European Union announced a second antitrust fine against the telecommunications giant.

The Dow industrials fell Wednesday as the start of earnings season exposed weaknesses in the growth outlook for some companies. Microsoft is set to report second-quarter results later Thursday.

In Europe, the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 index was almost flat, with declines in the technology and energy sectors offset by gains in health care.

While the European economy is doing well, "it's more about downside risk coming from trade wars combined with the everlasting Brexit risk," said Jorge Garyao, global head of inflation strategy at Société Générale. The trade tensions that are currently focused on U.S.-China "could easily move into the eurozone," he said.

The U.K.'s FTSE 100 index traded down after the government spending watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, warned of a recession lasting at least a year if Britain quits the European Union without a deal. The report said that a no-deal Brexit could cause the U.K. economy to shrink 2.1%.

In Asia, the Shanghai Composite Index fell 1%. Progress toward a trade deal has stalled while the Trump administration determines how to address Beijing's demands that it ease restrictions on Huawei Technologies, people familiar with the talks said. No face-to-face meetings have taken place or been scheduled since President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China met last month in Japan and agreed to resume talks.

"Markets don't seem to be taking the comments on trade tensions very well," said Fritz Louw, a currency analyst for Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. He added that investors are likely to see several days of volatility as they await progress in talks between China and the U.S.

The Nikkei 225 gauge dropped nearly 2% after Japan's exports tumbled for the seventh straight month in June, hit by a sharp drop in shipments of chip-making tools and automobile parts to China.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 2.060 from 2.102% on Wednesday, according to data from Factset. Yields fall when bond prices rise. The WSJ Dollar Index, which measures the currency against a basket of peers, was down less than 0.1%.

--Caitlin Ostroff contributed to this article.

Write to Lauren Almeida at lauren.almeida@wsj.com and Anna Isaac at anna.isaac@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 18, 2019 09:55 ET (13:55 GMT)

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