There was a heckuva rebound on Wall Street on Mon. The day started out ugly, as tech stocks were again pressured by rising Treasury yields. The Nasdaq Composite was down as much as 2.7%, putting the tech-heavy index briefly in correction territory, having fallen 10% from its record high in Nov. But a late rally in US stocks helped the Nasdaq eke out a tiny gain and snap a four session losing streak. The other major indexes finished modestly in the red.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 162.79 pts, or 0.45%, to close at 36,068.87. The broader S&P 500 index fell 0.14%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.05%. The small cap Russell 2000 dropped 0.4%.
The 10-year Treasury yield briefly traded above 1.8% on Mon, before finishing down 0.17 basis points (bps) at 1.7603%.
Take-Two Interactive Software (TTWO US, -13.13%), the folks that developed “Grand Theft Auto” will buy Zynga (ZNGA US, +40.67%), the makers of “Farmville”, in a deal valued at US$11b. The cash and stock transaction represents a 64% premium to Zynga's closing price on Fri.
Nike (NKE US,-4.2%) shares fell after an analyst at HSBC cut his rating on the stock from buy to hold. He thinks supply chain snarls that hurt consumer goods stocks in 2021 will continue into 2022. Lululemon Athletica (LULU US, -1.9%) fell after the company said the omicron variant had hurt its 4Q results.
The most actively traded US gold futures (Feb) contract settled up $1.40, or 0.1%, at US$1,798.80/oz. March silver, which is the most actively traded silver futures, rose 5.3 cents, or 0.2%, to end at US$22.462/oz.
The ICE dollar index (DXY), which measures the strength of the greenback against a basket of currencies, rose 0.28% to 95.991.
The front-month Brent and WTI futures closed down 88 cents at US$80.87/bbl and 67 cents at US$78.23/bbl respectively.
European equity markets finished lower on Mon. The UK FTSE lost 0.53%, France's CAC 40 fell 1.44%, while the German DAX retreated 1.13%.