Wall Street felt the tremors of the on-going US Iran conflict and opened in the red on Monday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed over 500 points and opened 1.07% lower at 48,456.10, S&P 500 opened 1.01% or 70 points lower at 6,809.68, while tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 1.30% or 300 points at open.
As of 10:15 a.m. EST, all three indices pared some losses. S&P 500 traded 0.2% lower at 6,856.66, Dow Jones traded 0.21% or 105 points lower at 48,872.94, and Nasdaq was trading 0.13% lower at 22,639.60.
Minutes after the US market opened, all but one of the sectoral indices traded in the red. The decline was led by the consumer discretionary sector and materials sector.
The only sector in the green was the energy sector, aided by soaring crude oil prices. West Texas Intermediate was trading over 6% higher at $71.55 a barrel, while global benchmark brent crude jumped over 7% to trade at $78.21 a barrel.
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Chris Larkin at E*Trade from Morgan Stanley pointed to a split picture concerning crude oil sentiment, "There are more questions than answers right now, but a stabilising energy picture could have a positive ripple effect, while concerns about a longer-term disruption could have the opposite,” he told news agency Bloomberg.
Gold futures were also trading higher as investors rushed to safe haven assets in times of uncertainty. The yellow metal rose 1.14% to $5,336.77 an ounce.
Among equities, major defense stocks surged. Shares of Lockheed Martin Corp. jumped nearly 4% to trade at $680, Northrop Grumman Corp. rose 4.5% to $756.59, and General Dynamics Corp. traded 1.6% higher at $363.05.
Of the seven magnificent stocks, Nvidia Corp, Microsoft Corp., retained investor confidence and traded over 1% higher. The rest, however, traded in the red. Google-parent Alphabet slipped over 2% to $304.11, Tesla Inc. traded 1.6% lower at $395.66, and Amazon.com Inc. slid 1.15% to trade at $207.59.
US spot dollar index strengthened against global currencies and rose 0.9%. Whereas, the euro fell 0.9% to $1.1704, British pound fell 0.7% to $1.3386, and Japanese yen fell 1% to 157.55 per dollar.
Bitcoin, the largest traded cryptocurrency, little changed at $65,630.8.
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