A fresh rally in US Treasury yields following upbeat retail sales data sapped demand for US equities and left all three benchmark indices nursing losses - Dow down -193-points or -0.78% and the broader S&P500 -0.68%, NASDAQ -0.81%, with Amazon (down -1.59%) and Google-parent Alphabet (-1.96%) pulling back over >1%. Tesla fell -2.67%, with reports their energy unit has seen the departure of two senior executives (and joining a list of 10 other executive departures in the past 7-months) and with the company reportedly planning to pause production at its California factory for six days at the end of the May to work on fixes to its assembly line for its new Model 3 sedan. Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway increased their stake Apple Inc (down -0.9%) at the end of the first quarter (now owning more than >US$40B worth of shares), sold out of International Business Machines Corp (-0.4%) and pared down its investments in General Motors Co (up +0.85%) to ~US$1.8B from ~US$2B according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Tuesday (14 May). In geopolitical news, North Korea has cancelled high-level talks with South Korea scheduled for later in the day and is also threatening to pull out of a summit with the United States due to ongoing military exercises between the US and South Korea.
