Wall Street closed mostly lower on Tuesday, a day after tumbling into a bear market on worries that high inflation will push central banks to clamp the brakes too hard on the economy.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.4% after another day of unsteady trading. Investors are bracing to see how big of an interest rate hike the Federal Reserve will make on Wednesday. Gains by several big technology companies including Oracle helped send the Nasdaq composite index up 0.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.5%. Treasury yields climbed again, reaching their highest levels in more than a decade.
Also, one of the more reliable warning signals for an economic recession started blinking again. Treasurys, the IOUs the U.S. government gives to investors who lend it money, are at the center of the investing world. The “yield curve" is a chart showing how much interest different Treasurys are paying. It is watched for clues to how the bond market feels about the long-term outlook for the U.S. economy.
On Tuesday, a closely followed part of the yield curve briefly lit up again for the second time this year.
