By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets opened higher on Wednesday, led by a bounce in tech stocks after their worst one-day sell-off since the early days of the pandemic.
By 10:15 AM ET (1415 GMT), the Nasdaq Composite was up 203 points, or 1.9%, recovering a little less than half of Tuesday's losses.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 459 points, or 1.7% and the S&P 500 was up 1.8%.
There were solid, but still limited, rebounds for Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock, the two highest-profile losers of recent days. Tesla bounced 6.8% after losing 21% on Tuesday, while Apple - which has countersued Fortnite publisher Epic Games in their dispute over commissions - regained 3.4% after losing some 8%.
Others to rebound sharply included Zoom Video (NASDAQ:ZM) stock, which rose 3.8%, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), which gained 3.3% and chipmaker Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) stock, which rose 3.7%.
Sentiment was helped by the release of the Bureau of Labor Stastistics' JOLTS job openings survey, which showed another sharp rise in the number of vacancies to 6.618 million from 6 million last month. That's the highest reading since May, and it may further ease the pressure on quarrelling U.S. politicians to strike a deal over another package of stimulus measures.
Senate Republicans on Tuesday proposed a package of measures with a sticker price of $650 billion, of which nearly half would be financed with unused funds left over from previous stimulus packages. House Democrats again rejected the measure as inadequate, although Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he still though there was a good chance of the two striking a compromise deal.
Even so, there were some big losers, including Tiffany (NYSE:TIF) stock, which fell 10.5% after French luxury giant LVMH (OTC:LVMUY) dropped its proposed $16.2 billion bid for the company. Investors appeared to attribute little chance of success to the jeweller's suit that seeks to force LVMH to go through with the deal. LVMH's move leaves Tiffany exposed to the risks of in a market where tourist spending and footfall at physical boutiques are all-important.
Other stocks in the red included Slack Technologies (NYSE:WORK) stock, which fell 14.4% after the messaging app company failed to live up to stretched expectations with its quarterly report after the close on Tuesday. Lululemon Athletica (NASDAQ:LULU) also fell after it declined to give guidance for the rest of the year on Tuesday - despite beating analysts' forecasts for the latest quarter.