NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks sagged early Friday on worries about higher interest rates even as slumping industrial giant General Electric rallied after solid earnings.
About 30 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.2 percent to 24,624.36.
The broad-based S&P 500 dropped 0.2 percent to 2,686.69, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite shed 0.6 percent to 7,192.45.
Analysts fixated on another rise in the yield on the 10-year US Treasury, which was up more than two percent at 2.93 percent. The rise has sparked worries the Federal Reserve will accelerate its pace of interest rate hikes.
GE surged 6.1 percent despite reporting a $1.2 billion first-quarter loss on legal charges after the conglomerate reaffirmed its 2018 forecast and reported better-than-expected profits when the legal charge was excluded.
Petroleum producers ExxonMobil and Chevron both lost more than one percent despite movement of major producers Saudi Arabia and Russia towards extending an agreement to defend higher oil prices. Analysts attributed the pullback in oil and oil-linked equities to profit taking.
Apple fell 3.4 percent, weighing on the Nasdaq, on worries that iPhone sales will lag expectations.
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