U.S. stocks fell in opening trade Monday, Aug. 31 after surviving last week’s extreme China-driven turmoil with net gains.
About 45 minutes into trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 162.14 points (0.97 percent) at 16,480.87.
The broader S&P 500 lost 18.92 points (0.95 percent) at 1,969.95, and the Nasdaq Composite gave up 42.56 (0.88 percent) at 4,785.77.
Nervousness still pervaded Wall Street after last week’s roller-coaster trade, and as some analysts continued to argue that US equities are generally overvalued.
Over the weekend Nobel economics laureate Robert Shiller, known for his sober analyses of market trends, wrote in The New York Times that based on price-to-earnings ratios, US markets are priced well above the long-term average despite the losses of recent weeks.
Shiller would not predict more losses but noted that at the moment the stock market “is inherently risky because of unstable investor psychology.”
None of the 30 Dow blue chips managed gains; United Technologies led the losers column with a 2.6 percent drop after Barclays analysts downgraded the stock.
ExxonMobil (-1.5 percent) and Chevron (-2.5 percent) led a pullback in oil industry shares after crude prices gave up some of their sharp gains last week.
Among gainers, Twitter, who shares have sunk over the past month, advanced 4.3 percent.
Bond prices edged up. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury fell to 2.14 percent from 2.18 percent Friday, while the 30-year dropped to 2.87 percent from 2.92 percent. Bond prices and yields move inversely.
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