Technology stocks weighed heaviest on US equity markets for second day in-a-row, with a combination of some soft corporate earnings releases, fresh US-China tensions and ongoing COVID-19 concerns promoting a broad-based sell-off - Dow down -182-points or -0.68%. Intel Corp tumbled -16.24% after revealing that its next generation of chips would be delayed and that it may seek a third-party manufacturer to make them. Goldman Sachs Group Inc (down -0.76%) will pay US$3.9B to settle Malaysia’s criminal probe over the U.S. investment bank’s role in the multibillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) scandal. The broader S&P500 shed -0.62%, with Information Technology (down -1.19%) and Health Care (-1.11%) leading ten of the eleven primary sectors lower. Consumer Discretionary (up +0.33%) was the only primary sector to advance. The technology-centric NASDAQ fell -0.94%. Facebook Inc (down -0.81%), Google-parent Alphabet Inc (-0.25%), Apple (-0.25%) and Microsoft Corp (-0.61%) all traded lower. However, Amazon.com Inc and Netflix Inc bucked the weaker trend, rising +0.75% and +0.60% respectively. The major Congressional hearing on competition in the U.S. technology sector has been delayed two days to Wednesday (29 July), the House Judiciary Committee confirmed on Saturday (25 July). The antitrust hearing is set to see Amazon Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai testify before the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee. Biotechnology company Moderna Inc on Sunday announced the U.S. government has committed up to an additional US$472M to its efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine.
