US stocks down as traders eye high Treasury yields
Wall Street stocks fell on Thursday as investors monitored rising bond yields and assessed the latest comments by the Federal Reserve chief. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury note, seen as a proxy for US interest rates, hovered just below five percent – a level it last breached in 2007. A reason for the climb, said Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital, is that the market feels "Fed rates will stay high for an extended period of time." The Dow Jones lost 0.8 percent to 33,414. The S&P 500 slipped 0.9 percent to 4,277, while the Nasdaq slumped 1.0 percent to 13,186. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Thursday that US inflation is "still too high" despite a recent slowdown. He told a New York conference that if additional data showed "persistently above-trend growth" or a reversal in labour market cooling, the central bank could reconsider its current pause in rate hikes. "Investors are not feeling confident that the Fed is close to ending its rate-tightening programme," said Sam Stovall of CFRA. Among individual companies, shares in electric vehicle maker Tesla dropped 9.3 percent after its results missed analyst estimates on Wednesday. But streaming company Netflix's shares surged more than 16 percent after it reported that its subscriber numbers grew nearly 11 percent to 247 million in the recently ended quarter. (AFP)