• US equity markets retreated, relinquishing earlier session gains and capping the worst 5-day start to a month for the Dow and S&P 500 since January 2016 - Dow fell -234-points or -0.60%,. Intel Corp fell -4.24% following a fresh broker downgrade (with analysts at Mizuho Securities cutting their recommendation to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Outperform’ and writing of “a tough road ahead to regain leadership”), extending the semiconductor company’s 5-day slide to -43.6%.

• The broader S&P500 lost -0.77%, with Consumer Discretionary (-1.39%), Materials (-1.39%), Information Technology (-1.36%) and Health Care (-1.07%) all declining over >1% to lead seven of the eleven primary sectors lower. Super Micro Computer Inc tumbled -20.14% after the artificial intelligence (AI) server company – and a customer and close partner of Nvidia Corp (-5.12%) – reported its fiscal fourth-quarter result after the close of the previous session as the cost of transitioning to more expensive AI chips weighed on the bottom line.