Stock futures opened lower on Tuesday, adding to losses after the three major indexes posted a second straight day of declines during the regular trading day.
Declines in the energy, industrials and financials sectors led the S&P 500 lower. Though the Nasdaq outperformed relative to the other two stock indexes, it still erased intraday gains to end in the red by market close on Tuesday.
Leadership in equity markets has see-sawed between cyclical and value stocks and technology shares, as investors consider prospects for a strong economic rebound, but also the possibility that the pick-up in activity generates a surge in inflation that ultimately weighs on the recovery. So far this month, those concerns have won out and dragged on the indexes, with the S&P 500 down 1.3% for May-to-date and the Nasdaq down 4.7%.
“We’ve been telling our clients that we’re probably entering a period where there’s going to be increased chop going forward,” Matt Orton, Carillon Tower Advisors, told Yahoo Finance. “We’ve had a pretty extreme rotation from growth into value. We’ve seen fits and starts of rotating back into the growth.”
