US equity markets settled with modest declines although mega-capitalisation technology stocks resumed their outperformance amid fresh falls for Treasury yields - Dow fell -80-points or -0.22%, logging back-to-back losses for the first time in nearly a month American Express Co fell -1.48% after Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Stephen Squeri addressed the Goldman Sachs financial services conference in New York and said October trends had softened. “If you just go back in the second quarter, we had about 8% overall billings growth. Third quarter, it came down to 7%. And in October, everybody got a little bit skittish, and I think other people have said the same thing that growth wasn’t as strong in October. And we didn’t see growth in October like it was in the third quarter.”