The Dow managed to eke out a small gain on Mon, but overall, it was a bummer of a day on Wall Street. The S&P 500 finished down, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq tumbled well into the red.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average edged 17.27 pts, or 0.05%, higher to close at 35,619.25. The S&P 500 index gave up early gains, and fell 0.32%.
The Nasdaq Composite retreated 1.26%. The S&P had hit a record high earlier in the day, after US President Biden nominated Jerome Powell, the current Fed chair for another four-year term. Top decliners on Mon include Amazon (AMZN US, -2.83%), Nvidia (NVDA US, - 3.12%) and Microsoft (MSFT US, -0.96%), along with payments firms Visa (V US, -2.63%) and MasterCard (MA US, -5.42%).
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note moved up 7.73 basis points (bps) to 1.6236%. The US swaps market is now pricing a full 25 bps rate hike into the Jun Fed meeting, with a second increase seen for next Nov.
Bank stocks reacted positively to the higher yields and the reappointment of Powell. Shares of JP Morgan (JPM US, +2.13%) and Morgan Stanley (MS US, +2.49%) closed up on Mon.
The ICE dollar index (DXY), which measures the strength of the greenback against a basket of currencies, rose 0.47% to 96.484. The euro dipped 0.46% to US$1.1248, its the weakest level since July 2020.
Goldbugs did not like the stronger dollar. The most actively traded US gold futures (Dec) contract settled down $45.30, or 2.4%, at US$1,806.30/oz. December silver, which is the most actively traded silver future, fell 48.4 cents, or 2.0%, to end at US$24.297/oz.