While you were sleeping: UPDATED Car sales slump hits Wall Street

Wall Street declined amid disappointing US car sales and concern about President Donald Trump's ability to deliver on promises that were seen as bolstering economic growth and corporate profits.

Shares of General Motors dropped, trading 3.8% weaker, while those of Ford Motor slid, trading 2.4% lower, amid car sales that fell short of expectations.

Bucking the trend, however, shares of Tesla jumped to a record high, up 6%, after it reported record-high deliveries. The gains pushed the market value of the electric-car maker above that of Ford.

"I don't know if people want electric cars, but people want Tesla," Ben Kallo, an analyst at Robert W Baird & Co, told Bloomberg.

"I'm not an [Tesla CEO] Elon Musk worshipper, but people that would normally buy a Porsche are buying Teslas right now."

Dow falls 13 points
At the close of trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 13.01 points, or 0.06%, to 20,650.21, while the Nasdaq Composite Index slid 0.3% to 5894.68. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index declined 0.2% to 2358.84.

The Dow weakened as declines in shares of DuPont and those of Caterpillar, down 1.7% and 1.1% respectively, outweighed gains in shares of UnitedHealth and those of Verizon Communications, up 0.7% and 0.4% respectively.

"It doesn't feel like the market is in panic, just that it is reassessing what the expectations were, and the expectations were we were going to get a lot of reforms quickly, and now it's clear that we're not," Ken Polcari, director of the NYSE floor division at O'Neil Securities in New York, told Reuters.

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index finished the session with a 0.5% drop from the previous close. Germany's DAX Index shed 0.5%, while the UK's FTSE 100 Index declined 0.6%, and France's CAC40 Index dropped 0.7%.

Food units sale mooted
Reckitt Benckiser shares slipped 0.4% in London. The company, which recently acquired Mead Johnson Nutrition, said it's considering a sale of its French's Food business.

Reckitt will begin a review and consider all options for the "non-core" business, according to media reports. French's Foods accounts for 4% of Reckitt Benckiser's total revenue.

A possible price tag of £2 billion, which the UK's Sunday Times newspaper reported, would imply a multiple of about 16 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, according to Bloomberg.

While that's above global food companies trading at 13.5 times on average, it's "probably justified by the strong fundamentals," Kepler Cheuvreux analyst Richard Withagen said in a note, Bloomberg reported.

(BusinessDesk)