By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets opened lower on Tuesday, as bond yields continued to exert pressure on tech stocks, while cautionary messaging from U.S. health authorities kept a temporary chill on reopening trades.
By 9:35 AM ET (1435 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 30 points, or 0.1%, at 33,141 points, while the S&P 500 was down 0.3% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was down 0.7%.
With the data and earnings calendars light, attention is largely on the launch of investment guru Cathie Wood's new space-themed exchange-traded fund, the first launched by Wood's company in two years. The fund's largest holding, Trimble (NASDAQ:TRMB) stock, enjoyed its moment in the spotlight, rising 3.1% to a new all-time high. However, Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE), which has a weighting of just under 2% in the ETF, was less fortunate, falling 0.6%.
Gainers were led by the stocks dumped so aggressively at the end of last week by the banks servicing Archegos Capital Management, the family office of former hedge fund manager and convicted fraudster Bill Hwang. The rises were largely unspectacular, but appeared to suggest that the forced selling by Archegos' banks was over.
Vipshop (NYSE:VIPS) stock rose 7.6%, while GSX Techedu (NYSE:GSX) stock rose 3.6% and Discovery A (NASDAQ:DISCA) shares rose 3.8%. ViacomCBS Inc (NASDAQ:VIAC) stock also eked out gains of 1.5%.
The market largely shrugged off news from the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Standard & Poor's that house prices rose at their fastest rate in at least seven years in February, given that the rise in mortgage rates since the start of the year seems likely to put a brake on that development soon. Lennar (NYSE:LEN) stock fell 0.9% while Zillow (NASDAQ:ZG) stock, which is down some 40% from its February peak, rose 0.4%.
Treasury yields have consolidated just below their highs for the year over the last 24 hours, with the market bracing for President Joe Biden's announcement on infrastructure spending on Wednesday. The rising trend in bond yields has been supportive of banking stocks for most of this year, and that was true again on Tuesday, with JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM), Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) and Citigroup (NYSE:C) all rising by between 1.9% and 2.6%. Goldman and Morgan Stanley were helped by reports that they had managed to dump their Archegos-related stocks before Nomura and Credit Suisse (SIX:CSGN), thus limiting their losses. By contrast, Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS) ADRs fell another 3.8%.