US Stock Markets Today: S&P 500 Opens Higher, Dow Falls Nearly 1%

Two out of the three main Wall Street indices opened higher on Thursday, as S&P 500 was up 0.26% at 5,812.50 points at the opening bell and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite climbed 0.57% to 18,380.45.

The 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average, however, opened 0.96% lower at 42,514.95.

Stocks like Salesforce Inc. were up 1.49%, Amazon.com Inc. surged 0.35%, and McDonald's Corp. jumped 0.30%. Among the companies that slipped in early trade were Honeywell International Inc., which dropped 3.93% and Boeing Co., which dipped 2.10%.

Among the 11 S&P 500 sectoral indices, five were trading higher, whereas six lagged against the previous day's close. The gains were led by the consumer discretionary sector and real estate sector whereas the consumer staple sector, energy sector and finance sector were among the drags.

“Near term, pullbacks/profit-taking should be expected given the uncertainties around the upcoming US presidential election, geopolitical uncertainty, and the earnings parade,” Craig Johnson at Piper Sandler told Bloomberg. “No change to our 2024 year-end S&P 500 price objective of 6,100.”

As the US market opened, spot gold rose 0.61% to $2,732.11 an ounce. Crude oil prices were higher, with Brent trading 0.48% higher at $75.32 per barrel.

The Bloomberg Dollar Index fell 0.2%, with the British Pound rising 0.5% to $1.2986 while the Japanese yen also rose 0.4% to 152.11 per dollar.

Bitcoin, the largest traded cryptocurrency, surged 1.6% to $67,651.74.