Major US stock indexes finished trading in the red

Major US stock indexes fell moderately after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on European goods, while lowering the forecast for global economic growth from the IMF heightened concerns about a slowdown in global growth caused by trade disputes.

Trump wrote that the US wants to impose duties on European goods worth $ 11 billion in response to EU subsidies for the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus. "The World Trade Organization has established that Airbus subsidies to Airbus had a negative impact on the United States, and now we will introduce import duties of $ 11 billion," he wrote on Twitter. "The EU has benefited from trade advantages for many years at the expense of the United States. It will end soon!" - he added.

The European Commission said that the level of proposed US countermeasures is greatly exaggerated and that the scale of the response can only be determined by the WTO arbiter.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered the forecast for global economic growth in 2019 by 0.2%, to 3.3%, warning that growth may slow down even more due to trade tensions and a possible indiscriminate exit of the UK from the European Union.

Investors are also continuing to prepare for the quarterly reporting season, which may be the first to show the annual reduction in corporate segment profits from 2016. The season of corporate reporting for the first quarter of 2019 starts on Friday with the publication of the results of the largest banks. According to Refinitiv, analysts predict that the profits of the S & P 500 companies in the first quarter will decline by 2.3% y / y. According to FactSet estimates, investors expect that the profits of the S & P 500 companies in the first quarter will fall by 4.3% y / y.

Most of the components of DOW finished trading in the red (25 out of 30). Caterpillar Inc. shares turned out to be an outsider. (CAT; -2.42%). The growth leader was The Walt Disney Co. (DIS; + 1.66%).

Almost all sectors of the S & P recorded a decline. Only the conglomerate sector grew (+ 0.2%). The largest decline was in the industrial goods sector (-1.4%).

At the time of closing:

Dow 26,153.90 -187.12 -0.71%

S & P 500 2,878.50 -17.27 -0.60%

Nasdaq 100 7,909.28 -44.61 -0.56%