Wall Street finishes mixed as tech slump offsets gains

Major U.S. stock indexes closed mostly lower Monday as another rise in bond yields helped set off more heavy selling in technology companies.

The S&P 500 fell 0.5% after having been up 1% earlier. Because of their huge size, drops by Apple, Google’s parent company and other major technology stocks helped drag the S&P 500 into the red, even though more stocks rose than fell in the benchmark index.

The selling, which accelerated toward the end of the day, left the techheavy Nasdaq composite down 10.5% from the alltime high it reached on Feb. 12. A drop of 10% or more from a recent peak is known on Wall Street as a “correction.”

Bond yields rose broadly. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note climbed to 1.60% from 1.55% late Friday.

Yields have been marching higher with rising expectations for the economy’s growth and for the inflation that could accompany it. Higher yields put downward pressure on stocks generally, in part because they can steer away dollars that had been headed for the stock market into bonds instead. That makes investors less willing to pay as high prices for stocks, especially those that look the most expensive, such as technology stocks.

Investors can expect more market volatility as long as bond yields keep rising, said Sylvia Jablonski, chief investment officer at Defiance ETFS. “I do think it’s something that’s going to be temporary.”

Still, she said, the pullback in technology stocks offers an attractive entry point for investors to snap up shares in some big names, like Apple and Amazon, at a better price.