US stocks trade mixed during early trade, Nasdaq outperforms

Major US equity indices continued with their recent corrective slide and opened slightly lower on Tuesday, weighed down by global growth concerns.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered its global growth forecasts for 2018 and 2019 by 0.2% below its prior forecast in July, blaming escalating US-China trade tensions and higher crude oil prices.  

Besides the fear of slowing global growth, the recent upsurge in the US Treasury bond yields to multi-year highs and prospects for a gradual Fed rate hike path, beyond 2018, was also seen weighing on investors’ sentiment.

Adding to this, political uncertainty abroad, stemming out of Italy’s budget proposals further collaborated towards denting investors’ appetite for perceived riskier assets – like equities.

However, a goodish up-move in technology stocks and expectations for strong corporate results in coming days helped limit any deeper corrective slide, at least for the time being.  

At the time of writing this report, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down over 100-points to 26,380 and the broader S&P 500 Index slipped nearly 7-points to 2,878. Meanwhile, tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite outperformed the markets and climbed around 10-points to 7,750.