Shares of banks and other financial institutions gave back some recent gains alongside Treasury yields, which paused in a dizzying run higher.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury finished the week at 1.459% after earlier topping 1.5%. "Seems that the market might get more comfortable with [higher] rates, especially if they stop moving," said Lorenzo Di Mattia, manager of hedge fund Sibilla Global Fund.
Trading app Robinhood Markets is in talks to pay a fine to settle investigations into its options-trading practices and outages the stock-trading app suffered in March 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The resurgence in "Investor sentiment was also negatively impacted by a renewed rally in individual 'meme stocks' favored by retail trading platforms," said strategists at money manager UBS Global Wealth Management, in a note to clients. "This rekindled concerns that hedge fund managers could be forced to sell the wider index if they are forced to close out short positions." There's some evidence that hedge funds have drastically reduced short-selling activity in response to "short squeezes" orchestrated by day traders in GameStop and other stocks.
Short interest relative to the shares available to trade for stocks in the broad Russell 3000 index fell to 5.6% on Feb. 22 from 7.5% on Jan. 19, one of its lowest levels in recent years, according to S3 Partners, a data-analytics firm.
Write to Rob Curran at rob.curran@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
02-26-21 1718ET
