PARIS, March 8 (Reuters) – The New York Stock Exchange opened in scattered order on Tuesday the day after a sharp drop in the indices linked to fears of long-lasting inflation against the backdrop of a sustained rise in commodity and oil prices.
Fifteen minutes after the first exchanges, the Dow Jones index gained 3.98 points, or 0.01%, to 32,821.36 points and the wider Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 0.07% to 4,197, 87 dots.
The Nasdaq Composite, which fell into a bear market on Monday with a 20.1% decline from its November 19 peak, lost 0.19%, or 24.58 points, to 12,806.38.
The positive trend is mainly supported by bargain purchases in tourism and air transport stocks.
“Nothing has really changed. It’s a bumpy market,” said Sam Stovall, investment strategist at CFRA Research in New York.
“It contributes to investors’ nervousness to see the Nasdaq entering a bear market (..) when the Fed has not even started to raise interest rates yet,” he adds.
The CBOE volatility index, also called the fear index, continues to rise (+0.4%).
Oil prices, which neared 14-year highs on Monday, rose again on Tuesday as the prospect of sanctions on Russian imports raise concerns about global supply.
According to a source familiar with the matter, the United States could announce during the day the ban on all imports of Russian oil.
At the opening of Wall Street, the barrel of Brent is trading at 129.4 dollars and that of American light crude (West Texas Intermediate, WTI) at 125.3 dollars.
The price of nickel, for its part, crossed for the first time in its history the threshold of 100,000 dollars per ton, while gold is moving at more than 2,000 dollars per ounce and palladium close to its recent records.
Nickel producer Polymet Mining jumped 35%, while gold producer Hycroft Mining soared 263%.
Energy groups like Chevron, ExxonMobil, Callon Petroleum and Occidental Petroleum take 1.7% to 3%.
The banking compartment is benefiting from the rise in yields on ten-year US Treasury bonds above 1.80% after a two-month low hit on Monday. Citigroup gains 1.6% and Bank of America 1.2%.
On the downside, digital heavyweights are falling like Tesla, which drops 1.5%.
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