By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets opened mixed on Tuesday after a surprise move by the Bank of Japan to let market interest rates rise added to the tightening of global financial conditions.
By 10:00 ET (15:00 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average had eked out a gain of 10 points or less than 0.1%, while the S&P 500 was up by a similar amount, and the Nasdaq Composite edged into negative territory.
The moves were in modest volumes, as activity tailed off ahead of the holiday season.
Overnight, the Bank of Japan had said it would allow 10-year government bond yields to rise to as much as 0.5%, from a previous target of 0.25%. The news supported the yen, forcing the unwinding of 'carry trades' that borrow cheap yen to invest in higher-yielding assets such as U.S. Treasuries. Medium- and long-duration bond yields rose by around 10 basis points, in turn, weighing on sentiment toward equities.
Among early movers, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) lost another 2.6% to another 25-month low after CNBC reported that Elon Musk is now actively looking for a new CEO, having presided over a chaotic couple of weeks since his leveraged buyout of the social company closed. Musk had polled Twitter users at the weekend about whether he should stand down. A clear majority of respondents said he should.
Tesla's rival in the EV space, Lucid Motors, rose 5.0% after the company closed a $1.5 billion capital raise. Around $900 million of that came in the form of new shares that were issued to Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which has agreed to a six-month lockup period. Lucid is still heavily cash-flow negative and has burned through around $5 billion so far this year.
Honeywell (NASDAQ:HON) stock rose 0.7% after the software company agreed to pay $203 million to settle charges in the U.S. and Brazil that it bribed officials in order to win contracts. It did not admit wrongdoing.
Elsewhere, FactSet Research (NYSE:FDS) stock fell another 2.1%, extending its poor run despite reporting earnings slightly ahead of expectations and reaffirming its outlook for the coming year. Nike (NYSE:NKE) and FedEx (NYSE:FDX) are due to report their earnings after the closing bell.