US STOCKS-Wall St slides as Trump's tariffs trigger risk aversion

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By Shashwat Chauhan

Feb 3 (Reuters) - Wall Street's main stock indexes hit multi-week lows in broad-based selloff on Monday, as fears of a full-blown trade war and its impact on the global economy jolted markets around the world after President Donald Trump levied steep tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China.

Over the weekend, Trump imposed hefty new tariffs of 25% on imports from Mexico and Canada, and 10% on China - which he said may cause "short-term" pain for Americans.

"The uncertainty at this stage is tremendous - not only of how these eventual negotiations will play out, but worries about how this is only the tip of the iceberg and more tariffs are on the horizon," said Yung-Yu Ma, chief investment officer at BMO Wealth Management, in a mailed comment.

"It's likely that the initial tariffs on Canada and Mexico are a negotiating template for what is to come."

At 10:02 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 620.66 points, or 1.39%, to 43,924.00, hitting a two-week low.

The S&P 500 .SPX lost 107.88 points, or 1.79%, to 5,932.65 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC lost 431.21 points, or 2.20%, to 19,196.23. Both hit their lowest level in over two weeks.

All 11 S&P sectors traded lower, with information technology .SPLRCT hitting a three-month low, bogged down by a 3.5% fall in Apple AAPL.O.

Chip stocks also slumped, with industry bellwether Nvidia NVDA.O sliding 5%, and a broader gauge of semiconductor stocks .SOX down 2.8%.

Legacy automakers - who had been roiled by the impending tariffs - dropped sharply. Ford F.N fell 2.9%, while General Motors GM.N shed 4.7%.

The economically sensitive Russell 2000 smallcaps index .RUT fell 2.4% to a three-week low.

Treasury yields edged down as investors fled to safer assets such as bonds and gold. Spot gold XAU= scaled an all-time high.

The Cboe Volatility Index .VIX, known as Wall Street's "fear gauge", jumped to its highest level in a week.

Goldman Sachs estimates that every 5-percentage-point increase in the tariff rate would lower the S&P 500's .SPX earnings per share by roughly 1% to 2%, and the latest tariff announcements could bring about a reduction in its forecasts for the S&P 500's earnings by roughly 2% to 3%.

The quarterly earnings, meanwhile, remained in full swing, with Tyson Foods TSN.N gaining 2.2% after the meat packer raised its annual sales forecast, while IDEXX Laboratories IDXX.O added 12.2% after the animal diagnostics maker beat fourth-quarter profit and revenue estimates.

Triumph Group TGI.N jumped 32.2% after the aircraft parts maker said investment firms Warburg Pincus and Berkshire Partners have agreed to buy the company in a deal valued at about $3 billion.

On the data front, U.S. manufacturing grew for the first time in more than two years in January, with the Institute for Supply Management's (ISM) reading at 50.9, rising above 50 for the first time since October 2022.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 4.74-to-1 ratio on the NYSE, and by a 5.22-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P 500 posted no new 52-week highs and 20 new lows, while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 13 new highs and 162 new lows.

(Reporting by Shashwat Chauhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

((Shashwat.Chauhan@thomsonreuters.com;))