New York (AFP)

The New York Stock Exchange retreated slightly early Tuesday, following the start of a Federal Reserve (Fed) monetary policy meeting and awaiting several results from US tech giants at the end of the day.

Around 2:05 p.m. GMT, the index of flagship stocks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, dropped 0.09% to 33,950.26 points.

The Nasdaq, with strong technological coloring, yielded 0.28% to 14,098.85 points and the extended S&P 500 index dropped 0.11% to 4,183.02 points.

The day before the close, Nasdaq and S&P 500 had reached record highs, while the Dow Jones had subsided a bit.

"It's only been six weeks since the Fed's last monetary policy meeting took place, but its members are meeting again today," said JJ Kinahan of TD Ameritrade.

"The press conference of Fed President Jerome Powell will take place just after the end of the meeting tomorrow at 2 p.m. on the east side of the United States and analysts do not expect a change of course," said he does.

The institution should therefore maintain its accommodative policy and its very low key rates that it deems necessary to help restart the US economy.

Besides the Fed, all the market's attention was on the results of listed companies, with the tech sector in the spotlight this week.

After the close of Wall Street, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, and Microsoft will publish their financial statements.

Apple and Facebook will comply with this exercise on Wednesday and Amazon will unveil its results on Thursday.

At the end of the day Monday, Tesla reported a record profit and saw its sales soar 74% in the first quarter.

The action of the manufacturer of electric vehicles, which has risen a lot in recent months, however, fell 3.59% at the start of the session.

Before the stock market opened on Tuesday, several companies also published their quarterly results.

Member of the Dow Jones index, the American group 3M, which manufactures, among other things, N95 masks against Covid-19, took advantage of the increase in purchases of personal protection to boost its turnover.

However, he left his annual forecast unchanged and saw its stock fall 2.79% on Wall Street.

The American conglomerate General Electric (GE) confirmed its forecasts for the whole year but its turnover, weighed down by the lower activity of its divisions devoted to aviation and health, disappointed.

The stock was down 2.39%.

The American package and parcel transport giant UPS has, for its part, unveiled quarterly revenues up sharply thanks to the boom in online commerce, in the United States as well as in the rest of the world.

Its title jumped 11.23%.

Raytheon Technologies (+ 1.36%) raised its annual forecasts, banking on a recovery in commercial aviation, hard hit since the start of the pandemic, and relying on the strength of its defense activities.

Hasbro (+ 0.42%), the seller of Nerf guns and Magic cards, reported higher than expected profits in the first quarter despite struggling to produce and distribute films and cartoons during the pandemic.

Among the indicators, American consumer confidence peaked in April since the start of the pandemic, according to the Conference Board index released on Tuesday.

© 2021 AFP