Published
3 years agoon
NEW YORK — Wall Street is flipping between small gains and losses Wednesday, as markets around the world take a pause following their big rally a day before.
The S&P 500 was up 0.1%, as of 11 a.m. Eastern time, after earlier pinging between a gain of 0.4% and a loss of 0.5%. Stocks elsewhere in the world made mostly modest gains, and Treasury yields were inching lower.
The chief risk for the market lies in rising infection levels in several hotspots around the world, including Florida, Texas and China. Even if authorities don’t reinstate widespread lockdowns, the worry is that businesses and consumers could get frightened by new waves of infections and pull back on their spending.
Most stocks in the S&P 500 were down. Besides cruise lines, which had the sharpest losses in the index, other travel-related companies that also need a reopening economy were also weak. American Airlines Group lost 3.3%, United Airlines Holdings gave up 3.9% and Delta Air Lines fell 3%.
Stocks of smaller companies were also particularly weak, which is typical when investors are getting more pessimistic about the economy. The Russell 2000 index of small-cap stocks fell 1.1%.
On the winning side were home builders after a report showed that construction activity rebounded following months of sharp declines due to shutdowns caused by the pandemic. Builders began construction on 4.3% more homes in May than April, though the growth wasn’t as strong as economists expected. D.R. Horton rose 2%.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 0.73% from 0.75% late Tuesday. It tends to move with investors’ expectations for the economy and inflation.
In Europe, Germany’s DAX returned 0.2%, and France’s CAC 40 rose 0.6%. The FTSE 100 in London added 0.1%.
In Asia, South Korea’s Kospi ticked up 0.1%, and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong rose 0.6%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.6% after the government reported the sharpest decline in exports since the 2008 global crisis.
A barrel of U.S. crude oil fell 0.5% to $38.18. Brent crude, the international standard, slipped 0.6% to $40.73 per barrel.
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