Wall Street closing lower; bank stocks fall | Business
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A woman wearing a protective mask walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan’s Nikkei 225 index at a securities firm Friday, March 19, 2021, in Tokyo. Asian stock markets followed Wall Street lower on Friday after rising U.S. bond yields pulled stocks lower, dampening enthusiasm driven by the Federal Reserve’s promise of low interest rates.
A man wearing a protective mask walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan’s Nikkei 225 index at a securities firm Friday, March 19, 2021, in Tokyo. Asian stock markets followed Wall Street lower on Friday after rising U.S. bond yields pulled stocks lower, dampening enthusiasm driven by the Federal Reserve’s promise of low interest rates.
A man wearing a protective mask walks in front of an electronic stock board at a securities firm Friday, March 19, 2021, in Tokyo. Asian stock markets followed Wall Street lower on Friday after rising U.S. bond yields pulled stocks lower, dampening enthusiasm driven by the Federal Reserve’s promise of low interest rates.
A man wearing a protective mask walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan’s Nikkei 225 index at a securities firm Friday, March 19, 2021, in Tokyo. Asian stock markets followed Wall Street lower on Friday after rising U.S. bond yields pulled stocks lower, dampening enthusiasm driven by the Federal Reserve’s promise of low interest rates.
A man wearing a protective mask rides a bicycle in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan’s Nikkei 225 and New York Dow indexes at a securities firm Friday, March 19, 2021, in Tokyo. Asian stock markets followed Wall Street lower on Friday after rising U.S. bond yields pulled stocks lower, dampening enthusiasm driven by the Federal Reserve’s promise of low interest rates.
FILE – In this Feb. 16, 2021 file photo, pedestrians pass the New York Stock Exchange in New York. Stocks were moving lower in the first hour of trading Friday, March 19, as bond yields continued to rise. Bank stocks fell after the Federal Reserve announced it would end some of its emergency measures put into place for the industry last year to help deal with the pandemic.
Wall Street closed out a choppy week of trading Friday with major stock indexes mostly lower and all finishing in the red for the week.
The S&P 500 ended 0.1% lower after reversing a small gain. The benchmark index, which hit an all-time high on Wednesday, posted its first weekly decline in three weeks. Losses by banks, industrial companies and technology stocks weighed on the market. They offset gains in companies that rely on consumer spending, health care and other sectors.
Bond yields were mixed, though the 10-year Treasury yield inched higher. The closely watched yield, which influences interest rates on mortgages and other consumer loans, has hovered this week near the highest level since January.
Higher yields put downward pressure on stocks generally, in part because they can steer dollars away from the stock market and into bonds instead. That makes investors less willing to pay as high prices for stocks.
“Overall, the very near term concerns are going back to some of the bigger picture questions,” said Barry Bannister, chief equity strategist at Stifel. “How high can yields go and what does that mean for stock valuations?”
The S&P 500 lost 2.36 points to 3,913.10. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 234.33 points, or 0.7%, to 32,627.97, pulled lower by financial companies. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 99.07 points, or 0.8%, to 13,215.24.
