NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks edged lower early Thursday after two strong sessions as oil prices resumed their upward climb and markets digested central bank moves to tighten monetary policy.
Equities rallied on Tuesday and Wednesday, in part due to hopes about Russia-Ukraine peace talks.
But Thursday’s news was filled with accounts of a Russian bombing of a Ukrainian theater sheltering many civilians, as oil prices pushed back above $100 a barrel.
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“Investors appear to have tempered their optimism of a near-term resolution, but more talks are scheduled for today,” analysts at Charles Schwab investment bank said in a note.
About 15 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.1 percent at 34,027.26.
The broad-based S&P 500 slipped 0.1 percent to 4,355.59, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index declined 0.2 percent to 13,411.29.
The Bank of England hiked its main interest rate to its pre-pandemic level of 0.75 percent, the third increase in a row.
The move comes a day after the Federal Reserve announced its first interest rate hike since 2018 in a bid to counter runaway inflation.
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