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Investing.com — U.S. stock markets opened flat to lower on Thursday as the renewed rise in long-term bond yields again undermined the valuations of technology stocks in particular, while helping bank stocks to new highs for the year.
By 9:40 AM ET (1440 GMT), the Nasdaq Composite was 9 points, or 0.1% lower, with chipmaker NVidia losing 2.1% after a slightly disappointing quarterly update after the closing bell on Wednesday. Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock lost 1.2% and Nio (NYSE:NIO) ADRs lost 1.6% as money continued to be redeployed within the electric vehicle sector in the wake of Lucid Motors’ merger with the Churchill Capital IV SPAC.
The S&P 500 was also down 0.1% but the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down only 10 points off the all-time high that it closed at on Wednesday.
The moves came after what appeared to be an improvement in the labor market sector as it reacted to the first lifting of lockdown measures in months. Initial jobless claims fell to 730,000 last week, a much sharper decline than expected.
Standing out in early trading was the continuation of Wednesday’s renewed short squeeze in GameStop (NYSE:GME) stock and AMC Entertainment (NYSE:AMC) stock, which rose 30% and 6.4% respectively as options dealers rushed to cover short call positions in an increasingly tight cash market.
Rising bond yields and a steeper yield curve continued to support financial stocks. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) stock rose 1.2% while Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) stock rose 0.8%.
