US STOCKS-Dow gains, S&P 500 slips as market weighs Fed rate hikes

Updates to close, adds analyst comment and market details

By Herbert Lash, Bansari Mayur Kamdar and Praveen Paramasivam

NEW YORK, April 8 (Reuters) – The Dow rose and the S&P 500 ended lower in choppy trade on Friday, as beaten-down bank shares gained and investors grappled with how best to deal with an economy that could skid as the Federal Reserve moves to aggressively tackle inflation.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note hit a three-year high of 2.73%, helping boost the S&P banking index .SPXBK, which on Thursday had slumped to 13-month lows.

Rate-sensitive lenders JPMorgan Chase & Co JPM.N, Bank of America Corp BAC.N, Citigroup Inc C.N and Goldman Sachs Group Inc GS.N all gained.

Since peaking at two-month highs in late March, the market has trended lower as the Fed signals it will aggressively hike rates, leading investors to reposition their portfolios. Economically sensitive value shares this year have outperformed tech-heavy growth stocks, which often depend on low rates.

“We’re going into a very long-term and meaningful period of value outperforming growth. It’s not merely a cyclical adjustment, but a secular story,” said David Bahnsen, chief investment officer at wealth manager the Bahnsen Group in Newport Beach, California.

“The value-growth story is a big one and it is a byproduct of two things, which is what you want. Growth is overvalued and value is undervalued,” he said.

Investors are weighing the probability of a recession with two outcomes. On the one hand, the Fed could engineer a “soft landing” with slowing but positive growth, making banks “woefully oversold,” said UBS bank analyst Erika Najarian.

Or a sharp slowdown is imminent, which would cause a knee-jerk bank share sale as “owning banks in a recession is no fun,” she said.

Big U.S. banks, which kick off the first-quarter results season next week, are expected to report a large decline in earnings from a year earlier, when they benefited from exceptionally strong dealmaking and trading. nL2N2W411P

“There’s always going to be a price at some point where people are going to step in and think things are cheap and they might buy,” said Randy Frederick, managing director, trading and derivatives, at Schwab Center for Financial Research.

“Perhaps a 52-week low was enough to entice some people into the financial sector,” Frederick said, noting the 10-year Treasury yield was at its highest level since March 2019.

According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 11.59 points, or 0.26%, to end at 4,488.62 points, while the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC lost 183.66 points, or 1.32%, to 13,713.64. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 144.21 points, or 0.42%, to 34,727.78.

Both the S&P 500 .SPX and the Nasdaq .IXIC ended the week lower. The Nasdaq was hit after Fed officials raised concerns about rapid rate hikes causing a slowdown. nL2N2W41S3

Shares of Tesla Inc TSLA.O, Nvidia Corp NVDA.O and Alphabet Inc GOOGL.O fell as megacap stocks extended this week’s decline as the surge in Treasury yields weighed.

The NYSE FANG+TM index .NYFANG, which includes Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O and Apple Inc AAPL.O, and semiconductor stocks .SOX also fell sharply this week.

Robinhood Markets Inc HOOD.O fell after a report said Goldman Sachs downgraded the online brokerage, while Kroger Co KR.N jumped on a ratings upgrade. nFWN2W60ZF nL3N2W62G6

(Reporting by Herbert Lash in New York
Additional reporting by Bansari Mayur Kamdar and Praveen Paramasivam in Bengaluru
Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Matthew Lewis)

((herb.lash@thomsonreuters.com; 1-646-223-6019; Reuters Messaging: herb.lash.reuters.com@reuters.net))