By Will Horner 

U.S. stocks slipped Tuesday, weighed down by declines in technology shares.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 68 points, or 0.3%, to 266548. The S&P 500 lost 0.4% and the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.8%.

Major indexes have paused their June rally in recent days as investors have awaited further details on the direction of monetary policy and trade. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is scheduled later Tuesday to deliver remarks that could offer clues on the central bank's thinking about interest rates. At its last meeting, the Fed suggested it could cut rates in the coming months if economic risks like the U.S.-China trade conflict worsen.

"Prudence is still justified because obviously the bar is quite high for a truce between the U.S. and China on tariffs at this week's G-20," said Kenneth Broux, a senior strategist at Société Générale. "The danger is of course that everything ends in acrimony and the whole moves of the past week or so reverse if the U.S. decides to raise tariffs to 25% on the remaining $300 billion [of Chinese goods]."

Technology shares lagged behind major indexes Tuesday, with Facebook falling 1.9% amid scrutiny over its plan to roll out its own cryptocurrency, Libra. Lawmakers said on Monday they would hold a hearing next month to discuss the cryptocurrency.

Other companies whose privacy practices have lately come under fire among regulators retreated, with Alphabet down 2.2% and Amazon.com down 1.3%.

Meanwhile, Allergan shares jumped 26% after rival drugmaker AbbVie said it would buy the company for more than $60 billion. AbbVie slipped 16%.

Elsewhere, the Stoxx Europe 600 fell 0.1%, weighed down by losses among bank stocks.

French consulting firm Capgemini and smaller rival Altran Technologies soared after the two companies agreed to merge, with Capgemini up 8% and Altran shares up 22%.

In commodities, gold jumped 1% to $1,432.40 a troy ounce, extending a rally that has propelled prices to their highest level since 2013.

Gold prices have been lifted by "a positive cocktail of factors," from lingering global-growth worries and U.S.-China trade tensions to escalating fears of a conflict between the U.S. and Iran, said Carsten Menke, a commodities analyst at Julius Baer.

"If you take everything together you have quite a bullish environment for gold. Then you have technical levels which have been broken like $1,380 or $1,400 and that's why we've had such a sharp rally," he said.

Earlier, Japan's Nikkei Stock Average fell 0.4%, while the Shanghai Composite fell 0.9% and snapped a six-session winning streak.

Akane Otani contributed to this article

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 25, 2019 11:42 ET (15:42 GMT)