Wall Street ends busy post-summer session in the red

Wall Street's main indexes closed lower on Tuesday, the first session after the US Labour Day holiday and summer vacations, as traders assessed fresh economic data in volatile trading.

A survey from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) showed the US services industry picked up in August for the second straight month amid stronger order growth and employment, while supply bottlenecks and price pressures eased. 

However, numbers from S&P Global showed the services sector Purchasing Managers' Index fell short of flash estimates for August.

A stronger-than-expected reading on the US services sector fueled expectations that the Federal Reserve will keep raising interest rates to tame inflation.

"The Fed has relegated us to being very data dependent, so every piece of information that comes out investors are going to look not only at the absolute level, but try to infer what that means for when the Fed meets," said Carol Schleif, deputy chief investment officer at BMO Family Office.

"One of the things that is disconcerting to investors is that there's really little to propel markets either up solidly or down solidly," she added.

Concerns over the supply of energy to Europe and how Covid-19 lockdowns will impact China's economy also drove markets down on Tuesday, said Shawn Cruz, head trading strategist at TD Ameritrade. "A lot of uncertainty and volatility is not coming from the U.S.; it's actually coming from overseas."

The tech-heavy Nasdaq suffered its seventh consecutive day of losses, its longest losing streak since November 2016.

Rate-sensitive shares of Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp  fell about 1% as benchmark U.S. Treasury yields rose to their highest levels since June. Apple Inc, which will launch new iPhones next Wednesday, lost 0.8.

Traders see a 74% chance of a third consecutive 75-basis-point rate hike at the Fed's policy meeting later this month, according to CME's FedWatch Tool.

The focus will be on Fed Chair Jerome Powell's speech on Thursday as well US consumer price data next week for clues on the path of monetary policy.

Markets started September on a weak note, extending a slide that started at the end of August, as hawkish comments from Fed policymakers and data signaling US economic momentum raised fears of aggressive interest rate hikes.

The S&P is down nearly 18% so far this year, while the Nasdaq has shed over 26% as rising interest rates hurt mega cap technology and growth stocks.

Among the major S&P sectors, energy and communication services were the worst performers, while defensive utilities and real estate rose.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) fell 173.14 points, or 0.55%, to 31,145.3; the S&P 500 (.SPX) lost 16.07 points, or 0.41%, to 3,908.19; and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) dropped 85.96 points, or 0.74%, to 11,544.91.

The CBOE Volatility index, known as Wall Street's fear gauge, touched a near two-month high of 27.80 before closing at 26.91.

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc tumbled 18.4% after Chief Financial Officer Gustavo Arnal fell to his death from New York's Tribeca skyscraper. 

Digital World Acquisition Corp fell 11.4% after Reuters reported the blank-check acquisition firm that had agreed to merge with former US President Donald Trump's social media company failed to secure enough shareholder support for an extension to complete the deal.

Volume on US exchanges was 10.71 billion shares, compared with the 10.46 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by a 2.46-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.12-to-1 ratio favoured decliners.

The S&P 500 posted no new 52-week highs and 29 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 19 new highs and 317 new lows.