"Apple has been the weak sister in the market today. That's having an outsized impact," Alan Gayle, senior investment strategist and director of asset allocation at RidgeWorth Investments in Atlanta, Georgia. "But if you look at the sectors, most everything is down with the exception of materials."
It wasn't all gloom and doom however.
Shares of Netflix climbed as much as 9.1 percent to a record high after Guggenheim Securities recommended the stock with a price target of US$160, the highest of any analyst covering the company, according to Bloomberg.
The Commerce Department said factory orders gained 1.8 percent in June, following a 1.1 percent slide in May.
Investors are awaiting Friday's government non-farm payrolls report to gauge the odds Federal Reserve policy makers will raise interest rates at their next meeting in September. Friday's report is expected to show US employers added 225,000 jobs in July, while the jobless rate held at 5.3 percent.
"The market is getting such a mixed bag of rhetoric from the Fed, it seems like the Fed isn't sure what it's going to do," Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago, told Reuters.
At least one regional Fed chief has made his position clear.
Atlanta Fed president Dennis Lockhart told the Wall Street Journal that he's set to vote for a rate rise in September. "I think there is a high bar right now to not acting, speaking for myself," Lockhart said. "It will take a significant deterioration in the economic picture for me to be disinclined to move ahead."
In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index ended the session with a 0.2 percent decline from the previous close. The UK's FTSE 100 Index slipped 0.03 percent, while France's CAC 40 Index fell 0.16 percent. Germany's DAX Index rose 0.1 percent.
Shares of BMW fell 1.3 percent. "If conditions on the Chinese market become more challenging we cannot rule out a possible effect on the BMW Group's outlook," the carmaker warned.
Greece's ASE Index fell 1.2 percent, following Monday's 16 percent plunge.
