Shares finish down with investors focused on Nvidia results, oil prices gain

(This story has been refiled to add a dropped word in the headline)

By Chibuike Oguh

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Global shares edged lower on Wednesday, snapping two straight sessions of gains, with investors weighing Nvidia's results, while oil prices rose amid supply concerns as OPEC+ left production unchanged and as U.S. authorities barred Chevron from exporting Venezuelan crude. 

Market sentiment had been lifted by easing of trade tensions between the U.S. and Europe, after President Donald Trump delayed plans to impose 50% tariffs on European goods. Trump said on Tuesday that the European Union's move to set up trade meetings was positive.

Nvidia reported sales that were ahead of analyst estimates but second-quarter revenue forecasts were slightly below Wall Street expectations, as the chipmaker faces tighter U.S. curbs on exports of its AI chips to China.

The semiconductor maker was the last of the "Magnificent 7" tech companies to report earnings this season. Its shares finished down 0.5% in regular hours but were up 3% in extended trading.

On Wall Street, all three indexes finished lower, led by utilities, energy, and materials stocks.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.58% to 42,098.70, the S&P 500 fell 0.56% to 5,888.55 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.51% to 19,100.94.

Europe's STOXX 600 finished down 0.61%, after having risen over the last two days on the back of Trump's EU tariff pause. Britain's FTSE fell 0.59%. MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe fell 0.54% to 876.37.

"This is part of the price discovery process," said Bill Strazzullo, chief markets strategist at Bell Curve Trading in Boston. "I think we are going to be in a range for the next couple of months because there's still a lot of uncertainty because we still don't know how the whole tariff thing is going to play out and how that's going to impact inflation, the economy and how the Fed is going to respond."

OPEC+, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, did not change output policy. It agreed to establish a mechanism for setting baselines for its 2027 oil production.

The Trump administration issued a new authorization for Chevron that would let it keep assets in Venezuela but not export oil or expand activities, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing sources.

Brent crude futures settled up 1.26% to $64.90 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude gained 1.56% to stand at $61.84 a barrel.

Federal Reserve officials at their last meeting acknowledged they could face "difficult tradeoffs" in coming months in the form of rising inflation alongside rising unemployment, according to newly released minutes of their last meeting earlier this month. 

U.S. Treasury yields were higher on the session, with the yield on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes up 3.9 basis points to 4.473% and the 30-year bond yield gaining 2.8 basis points to 4.9676%. An auction of $70 billion in U.S. five-year Treasuries, which cleared at 4.071%, showed healthy foreign demand.

The U.S. dollar gained against peers including the euro and yen amid optimism about possible trade deals and following soft demand for Japanese 40-year bonds.

The dollar strengthened 0.35% to 144.82 against the Japanese yen, but was flat at 0.827 against the Swiss franc. The euro down 0.32% at $1.1292.

Gold prices fell. Spot gold fell 0.18% to $3,293.66 an ounce. U.S. gold futures settled 0.2% lower at $3,294.90.

(Reporting by Chibuike Oguh in New York, Samuel Indyk in London and Rocky Swift in Tokyo; Editing by Sophie Walker, Nick Zieminski, Matthew Lewis and Sonali Paul)