Wall St slips on N Korea tensions

US stocks gave up early gains yesterday as rising tensions between the United states and North Korea weighed, while investors awaited Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s speech for more clarity on interest rate hikes. North Korean has boosted defenses on its east coast, a South Korean lawmaker said, following Pyongyang’s threat that it would shoot down US bombers flying near the peninsula.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Joseph Dunford said the United States should assume that North Korea has the ability to hit US mainland and that it has the will to use that capacity. Yellen’s speech is also in focus after Fed officials gave differing views on inflation, keeping investors guessing about the path that the central bank plans to take on interest rates.

“The Fed is in a bit of a quandary,” said Phil Blancato, chief executive of Ladenberg Thalmann Asset Management in New York. “The market is concerned about the Fed being aggressive, perhaps pushing us to a place where we don’t want to be, whether it’s an inverted yield curve or recession”.

At 11:31 am ET (1531 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.8 points, or 0.01 percent, at 22,294.29, the S&P 500 was down 0.53 points, or 0.02 percent, at 2,496.13 and the Nasdaq Composite was down 1.82 points, or 0.03 percent, at 6,368.77.

Nine of the 11 major S&P sectors were higher, with the technology sector’s 0.22 percent rise leading the gainers. The sector had taken a beating on Monday, recording its worst daily performance in five weeks, on increasing worries that the top-performing tech shares were falling out of favor.

Apple rose 1.5 percent to $152.54, posting its first rise in four sessions and propping up the three major indexes, after Raymond James raised price target by $10 to $170. Nvidia was up more than 4 percent, following a launch of an artificial intelligence-related software product. Financial index though was the biggest laggard, falling 0.14 percent. Among stocks, credit reporting firm Equinox fell 1.67 percent after the company said its Chief Executive Richard Smith would retire in the wake of a massive cyberattack.

Red Hat rose 2.22 percent after the Linux distributor’s quarterly profit came in above estimates and the company raised its full-year forecast. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1,584 to 1,161. On the Nasdaq, 1,536 issues rose and 1,206 fell. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index jumped 6 points, or 0.3 percent, to 2,503 as of 10:15 a.m. Eastern time. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 64 points, or 0.3 percent, to 22,360. The Nasdaq composite gained 29 points, or 0.5 percent, to 6,399 after a drop of 0.9 percent on Monday. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks picked up 3 points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,455.

SAILING ALONG: Carnival’s thirdquarter profit and revenue surpassed Wall Street’s expectations. The cruise line raised its annual forecasts and said bookings and prices for next year are higher than they were at this time a year ago. Carnival gained $2.20, or 3.5 percent, to $65.70 and competitor Royal Caribbean Cruises rose $4.77, or 4.2 percent, to $118.65.

TECH RESET: Big technology companies recovered after sharp losses a day earlier. Apple picked up $2.32, or 1.5 percent,

to $152.87 and chipmaker Nvidia rose $6.52, or 3.8 percent, to $177.52. Facebook added $2.28, or 1.4 percent, to $165.12. Open-source software maker Red Hat climbed $4.59, or 4.3 percent, to $110.35 after a better-than-expected second quarter.

EQUIFAX DEPARTURE: Equifax CEO Richard Smith is retiring as the credit reporting agency tries to clean up a mess left by a data breach that exposed highly sensitive information about 143 million Americans. Smith had been CEO since 2005 and is also stepping down as chairman. The company said Smith won’t receive his annual bonus or other benefits until Equifax finishes its investigation into the data breach it disclosed earlier this month. Two other company executives left on Sept. 15. Equifax lost $1.27, or 1.2 percent, to $103.82.

ENERGY: Benchmark US crude slid 48 cents to $51.74 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, the standard for international oil prices, fell 69 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $57.74 a barrel in London.

BONDS: Bond prices declined. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.24 percent from 2.22 percent.

CURRENCY: The dollar rose to 112.16 yen from 111.61 yen. The euro fell to $1.1786 from $1.1846.

OVERSEAS: Germany’s DAX rose 0.2 percent and France’s CAC 40 added 0.1 percent. In Britain the FTSE 100 was unchanged. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 lost 0.3 percent and the Hang Seng of Hong Kong gained less than 0.1 percent. The South Korean Kospi declined 0.3 percent. — Agencies