By Liz Moyer
Investing.com -- U.S. stocks fell early on Thursday as Treasury yields rose after the suggestion the Federal Reserve wasn’t close to ending its interest rate increases to stop inflation.
At 09:48 ET (14:48 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 216 points or 0.6%, while the S&P 500 was down 1%, and the NASDAQ Composite was down 1.1%.
The 2-year Treasury yield rose to 4.446% while the 10-year Treasury yield rose to 3.777%. St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said the central bank’s policy rate hasn’t yet reached “a zone that may be considered sufficiently restrictive.”
The Fed has raised its benchmark rate by 0.75 percentage point at each of its last four meetings and is widely expected to raise again at its December meeting, though possibly at a smaller half-point increment.
Strong retail sales data on Wednesday and lower than expected jobless claims from last week may muddy the picture for the Fed, which wants to cool the economy while avoiding massive job losses.
Shares of Macy’s, Inc. (NYSE:M) rose 10% after the department store chain raised its full year profit outlook, while Kohl’s Corp. (NYSE:KSS) shares rose 0.8% after it withdrew its own sales and profit forecasts.
Chipmaker NVIDIA Corporation's (NASDAQ:NVDA) shares rose 1.2% after beating quarterly revenue estimates on strong demand in its data center business.
Oil fell. Crude Oil WTI Futures was down 1.8% to $84.08 a barrel, while Brent Oil Futures crude fell 1% to $92.86 a barrel. Gold fell 0.7% to $1762.