U.S. stocks opened with slight losses on Tuesday, as investors closely watched the tense situations with North Korea and Syria, which could drive sentiment in coming days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.2% to 20,630. The S&P 500 lost 0.2% to 2,352. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 0.2% to 5,871. Major indexes are within a few percentage points of their all-time highs, hit last month, but investors are looking for new catalysts to push shares decisively higher from here. In addition to political issues, market participants are looking ahead to the upcoming earnings season, which could determine whether the multimonth rally in stocks will be justified by corporate America’s economic activity. The worst performing sector of the day was financials, which dropped 0.4%, and utilities, which shed 0.7%. Among the most active stocks on the day, United Continental Holdings Inc. dropped 2% as the airline continued to deal with the fallout of having a passenger forcibly dragged off a plane.
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