It was a choppy start to the short trading week, with stocks spending time in both positive and negative territory Tuesday. Bears gained the upper hand in the afternoon, though, with the three major indexes ending another day in the red.
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Although this week's economic calendar is fairly thin, data from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) this morning showed that activity in the services sector ticked up to 56.9% in August - the highest level since April - from July's 56.7%.
"This is the most recent piece of data to suggest the economy remains resilient and as such the market takeaway is that this gives the Fed more room to continue raising rates," says Michael Reinking, senior market strategist for the New York Stock Exchange. "Futures markets are now pricing in a 75% chance of a 75 basis-point hike later this month from a coin flip late last week." A basis point is one-one hundredth of a percentage point.
In reaction to today's ISM data, the 10-year Treasury yield rose to its loftiest level since mid-June. This, in turn, weighed on shares in the communication services (-1.3%) and technology (-0.6%) sectors, with names such as streaming giant Netflix (NFLX, -3.4%) and chipmaker Intel (INTC, -2.8%) seeing notable declines.
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As for the major indexes, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 0.7% to 11,544, its seventh straight loss.
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