S&P 500, Nasdaq end higher in choppy session

NEW YORK, May 10 (Reuters) – The S&P 500 and Nasdaq ended higher on Tuesday, with big growth shares rising after the previous day’s selloff as Treasury yields tumbled.

Bank shares fell along with yields. The benchmark 10-year note yield dropped from more than a three-year high to below 3%.

The Dow also ended lower, and the day’s trading was choppy, with major indexes moving between gains and losses as investors were nervous ahead of the release of Wednesday’s U.S. consumer price index data and Thursday’s producer prices data.

Investors will be looking for signs that inflation is peaking.

Worries that the U.S. Federal Reserve may have to move more aggressively to curb inflation have driven the recent selloff in the market. A host of other concerns have added to the pressure.

“It’s just fear-based selling,” said Jake Dollarhide, chief executive officer of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“It can’t just be the Fed’s going to raise rates to stave off inflation, because we’ve seen that before,” he said. Instead, investors have been worried about everything from rates and inflation to the war in Ukraine, supply chain problems and China’s COVID-19 lockdowns, Dollarhide said.

Shares of Apple Inc AAPL.O rose 1.6% and gave the S&P 500 and Nasdaq their biggest boosts.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 84.96 points, or 0.26%, to 32,160.74, the S&P 500 gained 9.81 points, or 0.25%, to 4,001.05 and the Nasdaq Composite added 114.42 points, or 0.98%, to 11,737.67.

Technology and growth stocks, whose valuations rely more heavily on future cash flows, have been among the hardest hit in the recent selloff. The Nasdaq is down about 25% for the year so far.

S&P 500 technology rose 1.6% on the day and led S&P 500 sector gains. The S&P 500 growth index was up 0.9%, while the S&P 500 value index was down 0.4%.

Investors digested comments from Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester, who said the U.S. economy will experience turbulence from the Fed’s efforts to bring down inflation running at more than three times above its goal and recent volatility in the stock market would not deter policymakers.

U.S. President Joe Biden in a speech Tuesday addressing high inflation said he was considering eliminating Trump-era tariffs on China as a way to lower prices for goods in the United States.

Among the day’s gainers, Pfizer Inc PFE.N shares rose 1.7% after it said it will pay USD 11.6 billion to buy Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Co BHVN.N. Biohaven shares jumped 68.4%.

On the down side, Peloton Interactive Inc (PTON) dropped 8.7% as the fitness equipment maker warned the business was “thinly capitalized” after it posted a 23.6% slide in quarterly revenue.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 15.45 billion shares, compared with the 12.55 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.36-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.34-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 1 new 52-week highs and 63 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 19 new highs and 1,066 new lows.

Big Tech & growth stocks lose over USD 1 trillion in market capitalization since Fed hike in May.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; additional reporting by Amruta Khandekar and Devik Jain in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila, Shounak Dasgupta and Aurora Ellis)