By Shivani Kumaresan and Medha Singh
(Reuters) - Major U.S. stock indexes fell from record levels on Monday as investors sought cues from first-quarter earnings reports to justify the rich valuation of equities, while Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) shares fell following a fatal car crash.
The electric-car maker was down 3.5% after a Tesla vehicle, which was believed to be operating without anyone in the driver's seat, crashed into a tree on Saturday night north of Houston, killing two occupants.
The stock, which was the biggest drag on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, was also under pressure due to a sharp drop in bitcoin over the weekend.
Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) Co rose 1% after the beverage maker trounced estimates for quarterly profit and revenue, benefiting from the easing of pandemic curbs and wide vaccine rollouts.
IBM (NYSE:IBM) Corp, another blue-chip company, slipped about 0.2% ahead of its results after market close.
"The market has had a huge jump to the upside so it needs to take a little bit of rest," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities in New York.
"For now it's just a little bit of profit taking as traders await results from big tech names on Wall Street."
A recent pullback in the benchmark 10-year bond yield from 14-month highs has renewed interest in richly valued technology stocks, while a string of strong economic data has also helped push the S&P 500 and the Dow to record levels.
The S&P 500 has risen for the past four weeks, its longest winning streak since August 2020.
About 79 S&P 500 companies are due to report earnings this week, including Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX), Intel Corp (NASDAQ:INTC), Honeywell (NYSE:HON) and Schlumberger (NYSE:SLB), according to Refinitiv IBES data.
Analysts now expect first-quarter earnings for S&P 500 firms to rise 25% from last year.
Nine of the 11 major S&P sectors dropped, while the defensive consumer staples and real estate were in positive territory.
At 11:37 a.m. EDT the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 149.99 points, or 0.44% , to 34,051.05, the S&P 500 lost 21.88 points, or 0.52 %, to 4,163.59 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 153.28 points, or 1.09 %, to 13,899.06.
GameStop Corp (NYSE:GME) jumped 6.7% on the announcement of its CEO's resignation.
Crypto stocks including miners Riot Blockchain (NASDAQ:RIOT) and Marathon Digital slumped about 11% each as bitcoin took a hammering.
Harley-Davidson (NYSE:HOG) jumped 12% after the motorcycle maker raised it full-year forecast for sales growth.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 2.2-to-1 ratio on the NYSE by a 3.9-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted 56 new 52-week highs and no new lows while the Nasdaq recorded 128 new highs and 87 new lows.