By Yasin Ebrahim
Investing.com -- The S&P 500 cut some gains Monday as investors weighed a slip in tech against relief in banks after First Citizens BancShares struck a deal to purchase failed Silicon Valley Bank.
The S&P 500 rose 0.12%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.6% or 185 points, and the Nasdaq fell 0.5%.
First Citizens BancShares (NASDAQ:FCNCA) purchased all the remaining assets, deposits and loans of collapsed Silicon Valley Bank, or SVB, for $72 billion, representing a discount of $16.5B.
First Citizens BancShares, which is expected to move into the top 20 U.S. banks following the move, jumped more than 44%.
Other regional banks surged, with First Republic Bank (NYSE:FRC) up 9%, Comerica (NYSE:CMA) up 5% and Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) up 4%.
A stutter in tech kept gains in the broader market in check as Treasury yields had a rip-roaring start to the week after Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard talked up the prospect of higher rates at a time when many in the market bet on cuts later this year.
“Bullard's comments over the weekend (ie: 5.75% terminal rate) may be contributing to higher short-term rate pressures,” Scotiabank (TSX:BNS) Economics said in a note.
“[P]ricing for the May meeting has moved up by 5–6 basis points at the end of Friday to about 11bps now such that about half of a quarter point hike is being priced.”
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), Alphabet, and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) were in the red.
Pinterest (NYSE:PINS), meanwhile, was up 2% after UBS upgraded the social media stock to buy, with a price target of $35, up from $27, citing evidence of improved advertising efficiency.
“We think ad tech moves - including but not limited to partner monetization - stand to drive a step function improvement in revenue growth,” UBS said in a note.
Novartis (NYSE:NVS) jumped more than 8% after the drugmaker said results from its late-stage trial showed its breast cancer drug "significantly reduced" the risk of recurrence in women.
In cryptocurrency-related news, the Commodity Futures and Trading Commission filed a lawsuit on Monday against crypto exchange Binance and its co-founder, Changpeng Zhao, for allegedly selling unregistered crypto securities in the U.S.
The lawsuit comes just less than a week after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission threatened to sue Coinbase Global (NASDAQ:COIN) for allegedly listing unregistered securities.