US open: Stocks under pressure as bond yields continue move higher

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US stocks were coming under renewed pressure on Tuesday morning as bond yields continued to move higher even as investors waited on Friday's all-important non-farm payrolls report.

As of 1545 BST, the Dow Jones Industrials was off by 0.95% to 33,109.13, alongside a 1.17% drop on the S&P 500 to 4,237.42.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite on the other hand was losing 1.53% to 13,104.70.

The CBoE's VIX index, a closely watched measure of stock market volatility, was up by a hefty 10.51% at 19.46.

Yields on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury note was up six basis points to 4.752%, as selling pressure in the Treasury market continued.

Overnight, three top Federal Reserve officials made hawkish statements with two of them broaching the possibility of further interest rate hikes.

Governor Michele Bowman told a bankers' conference in Canada: "I remain willing to support raising the federal funds rate at a future meeting if the incoming data indicates that progress on inflation has stalled or is too slow to bring inflation to 2 percent in a timely way."

The U.S. dollar index on the other hand was little changed at 1.07, likely kept in check by comments overnight, out of Japan's finance minister, against excessive weakness in the yen.

Worth noting, for some market observers higher Treasury yields were not just a function of economic resilience but also the result of heavy debt issuance on the back of much higher levels of spending by government.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the number of job openings jumped in August at a month-on-month pace of 7.7% to reach 9.610m (consensus: 8.83m).

However, the so-called 'quits' rate was unchanged at 2.3% and - more importantly - back at its level from before the pandemic.

"Other aspects of the JOLTS report were more benign. The job openings to unemployed ratio ticked lower because of the rise in unemployment in the household survey in August," said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead US economist at Oxford Economics.

"The quits rate, which is a good leading indicator of wage pressures, held steady and suggest that wage growth will continue to moderate."

Dow Jones - Risers

Boeing Co. (BA) $190.93 1.65%
Intel Corp. (INTC) $35.94 1.35%
Nike Inc. (NKE) $95.00 0.47%
Dow Chemical Co. (DOW) $51.54 0.47%
Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (WBA) $22.51 0.40%
Chevron Corp. (CVX) $166.99 0.27%
Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) $145.54 0.24%
Dowdupont Inc. (DWDP) $0.00 0.00%
International Business Machines Corporation (CDI) (IBM) $140.68 -0.08%
Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) $31.68 -0.24%