4 Hours Ago
Real estate and utilities suffered Wednesday as Treasury yields leapt
Two rate-sensitive sectors of the broad market took their lumps on Wednesday as stocks sold off and the 10-year Treasury yield spiked above 4.5%.
Real estate slid 4.1%, making it biggest loser among the 11 sectors of the S&P 500. Though all of the underlying stocks within the sector were negative, SBA Communications, Extra Space Storage and Boston Properties all tumbled more than 6%.
Utilities also slumped, dropping 1.7%. AES Corp, Pinnacle West Capital and CenterPoint Energy dragged the sector lower; all three stocks dropped more than 3%.
Real estate and utilities can have a tough time in high interest rate environments. That’s because higher rates raise borrowing costs for both real estate investment trusts and utilities.
Those sectors also become less appealing to income-seeking investors when rates are high, as they may be drawn to yields from safer Treasurys rather than the dividends coming from real estate and utility stocks.
–Darla Mercado
5 Hours Ago
Regional banks crushed by Wednesday’s market reaction to March inflation
It’s not immediately apparent that regional banks fell as far as they did Wednesday in response to March’s faster inflation and subsequent repricing of Treasury yields higher. After all, the S&P 500 Financial Index only fell 1.5% compared with a 1% drop in the S&P 500.
But the S&P 500 Financials contain all sorts of outfits, from the country’s largest banks such as JPMorgan and Bank of America to credit card networks Visa and Mastercard.
Drill down closer to regional banks to find the S&P 1500 Regional Bank Index, composed of all those in the S&P 500, the S&P Midcap 400 and S&P Smallcap 600, to see it down 4.5% Wednesday. Examples abound of the carnage: Long Island’s New York Community Bancorp was off 8.1%, Boston’s Brookline Bancorp by 5.9% and Western Alliance Bancorp in Phoenix by 5.8%. West Virginia’s MVB Financial tumbled 5.1% and New Jersey’s BCB Bancorp by 4.5%.
Bank of America analysts Monday said investors will scour first quarter earnings reports from the banks for “potential areas of vulnerability in a higher for longer rate backdrop (commercial real estate, overall credit, deposit costs) while searching for a bottom in net interest income (NII; ~80% of revenues on average).”
— Scott Schnipper
5 Hours Ago
Vertex Pharmaceuticals acquires Alpine Immune Sciences
Shares of Vertex Pharmaceuticals dipped 1% in extended trading after the biotechnology company announced that it will acquire Alpine Immune Sciences for $4.9 billion in cash, or about $65 a share.
Alpine shares surged more than 36% after the bell. The biopharmaceutical company develops protein-based immunotherapies that treat certain autoimmune diseases.
— Samantha Subin
6 Hours Ago
Stock futures open lower on Wednesday evening
U.S. stock futures were lower on Wednesday night.
Futures linked to the S&P 500 slipped by 0.2%, while Dow futures dropped 79 points, or 0.2%. Nasdaq 100 futures slid 0.16%.
–Darla Mercado