By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets started the week in mostly negative territory, against a backdrop of reported technical outages at a number of brokerages including Robinhood and TD Ameritrade (NASDAQ:AMTD),
While prices had still been supported in premarket by strong data in China and expectations of easier monetary policy after Federal Reserve Charman Jerome Powell's keynote speech last week, there was little else to get excited about, and selling pressure accelerated slightly over the first half hour of trading.
By 10:10 AM ET (1410 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 179 points, or 0.6%, at 28,473 points. The S&P 500, which had been on course to open at a new record high, instead was down 0.2%, while the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.3%.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock was up 1.6% while Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock, after a quiet opening, rose 4.1% as the two stocks traded for the first time after splitting at the weekend.
The cut in Apple's nominal share price weighed on the Dow Jones, a price-weighted index, as it reduced the influence of movements in Apple - one of the strongest index components this year - to the benefit of less well supported names.
Elsewhere, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) stock fell 0.7% and Walmart (NYSE:WMT) stock fell 2.5% after their bid to buy the U.S. operations of video-streaming service TikTok was thwarted - at least temporarily - by new Chinese regulations restricting the export of artificial intelligence software. Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) shares, which had also gained on speculation that it may buy the TikTok assets, fell 0.9%.
AT&T (NYSE:T) stock fell 0.2% despite hopes that it will revive plans to sell DirecTV, one of its more expensive and less successful acquisitions in a spree that left it with over $150 billion in net debt.. In growth stocks, Beyond Meat (NASDAQ:BYND) stock rose 4.4% to a three-week high after an upgrade from Citigroup (NYSE:C) analysts.
Earlier, Federal Reserve vice-chairman Richard Clarida had failed to add much to the state of market knowledge in a speech fleshing out the Fed's adoption of an average inflation target over the medium term, a shift that analysts say will result in a structurally looser monetary policy. Fed Chairman Powell's speech had kept all risk assets, including equities, well supported at the end of last week, despite prompting an upward tick in long-term bond yields, which translate into a higher cost of capital for most companies.
The Fed's strategy shift has kept the dollar under pressure since then. The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of developed-market currencies, was down 0.1% at 92.25, while gold futures were up 0.2% at $1,979.40 a troy ounce.