NEW YORK: Wall Street struggled for direction on Tuesday as investors weighed receding concerns about a banking crisis, while Treasury yields rose amid focus on Federal Reserve’s interest rate trajectory.
Growth stocks such as Microsoft Corp, Alphabet Inc, Apple Inc and Tesla Inc remained under pressure, falling between 0.8% and 1.5% as yields rose.
Money market bets are now split between the Fed raising interest rates by 25 basis points and a pause in its policy meeting in May, after being largely tilted towards a no-hike scenario at the end of last week. Investors expect a sharp easing in rates thereafter.
Strategists said that as lenders report quarterly results from next month, the market will learn more details about the health of banks following the collapse of some big regional lenders that fanned fears of a sector-wide contagion.
Shares of First Citizens BancShares Inc climbed 3.7%, following a more than 50% surge on Monday after it said it would acquire the deposits and loans of Silicon Valley Bank, whose collapse earlier this month sparked a selloff in the sector.
The KBW regional banking index added 0.3%, while among the big US banks JP Morgan Chase & Co was up 0.4%, while Bank of America was down 0.5%.
“The good news is that folks pulling deposits out, that’s starting to taper off from a couple weeks ago and maybe some of those uninsured deposits are moving money around,” said Jonathan Waite, fund manager at Frost Investment Advisors.
At 11:59 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 83.69 points, or 0.26%, at 32,515.77, the S&P 500 was down 2.49 points, or 0.06%, at 3,975.04, and the Nasdaq Composite was down 63.64 points, or 0.54%, at 11,705.20.
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