'Meme' stocks gyrate as Wall Street opens little changed

NEW YORK: Major Wall Street indices appeared headed for another choppy session early Wednesday, while so-called "meme" stocks gyrated.

Stocks were again near the flat-line as investors seek to assess whether inflation will emerge as a major threat to the recovery. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury note slipped early in the day, suggesting less worry on the inflation front.

In other news, US President Joe Biden and Senate Republicans on Tuesday ended weeks of negotiations on an infrastructure package, with each side blaming the other for the talks' collapse.

Meanwhile shares of Clover Health Investment jumped more than 12 percent, while AMC Entertainment sank more than 11 percent. Both companies are among the equities supported by investors on social media platform Reddit.

About 15 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.1 percent at 34,578.28.

The broad-based S&P 500 gained 0.1 percent to 4,232.71, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 0.4 percent to 13,978.96.

Among individual companies, Campbell Soup fell 5.4 percent as it reported that sales dropped 11 percent from the year-ago period to $2.0 billion, reflecting a decline from the surge seen a year ago caused by pantry-loading in the early days of the pandemic.