By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets opened higher on Monday, after falling last week for the first time in six weeks.
By 9:40 AM ET (1440 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 130 points, or 0.4%, at 36,230 points. The S&P 500 was up 0.3% and the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.4%.
However, pockets of weakness persisted, notably in long-duration growth stocks which were the beneficiaries of much new age hype during the first year of the pandemic. Faux milk company Oatly (NASDAQ:OTLY) followed where faux burger company Beyond Meat (NASDAQ:BYND) had gone the week before, plummeting 20% after posting disappointing earnings and saying it may have to destroy some inventory due to quality issues.
Splunk (NASDAQ:SPLK) stock also fell 12% after the data analytics and cybersecurity company said its CEO Doug Merritt will step down after six years on the job. Its quarterly numbers, which were also released on Monday, were largely in line with expectations, although the company warned that it still expects to have a negative operating margin of around 14% this year.
Splunk stock is now down by over one-third from its peak earlier this year, while Oatly and Beyond Meat have fallen by two-thirds from their respective all-time highs.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock fell 3.3%, dipping below $1,000 and testing a three-week low after news that CEO Elon Musk continued selling stock on Friday to help pay a tax bill that is due because he exercised options previously granted as compensation. Musk continued to frame his actions as a response to the Democratic Party's infrastructure and Build Back Better bills, which need big new sources of revenue to fund them. However, the tax liability is due under tax laws inherited from the last Congress. Hedge fund manager Michael Burry, known for his role in shorting subprime credit in the 2008 crisis, retorted via Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) that Musk "just wants to sell Tesla."
Elsewhere, Tyson Foods (NYSE:TSN) stock rose 1.0% after reporting earnings that showed that the country's biggest meat producer is successfully getting customers to pay for the higher input costs it is experiencing, notably for labor. Food price inflation in the U.S. ran at 5.3% on the year through October, but last week's inflation data showed that prices for items such as steak were up nearly 25% on a year, while pork prices were up 14%.
Boeing (NYSE:BA) stock also gained, rising 3.6% to a three-month high after orders for freight aircraft announced at the Dubai Air Show, while Dollar Tree (NASDAQ:DLTR) stock surged 14% to a new all-time high after a Wall Street Journal report saying that activist investor Mantle Ridge had accumulated a stake of over 5% in the company with a view to pressing for changes to its board and strategy.