Wall Street stocks slip, rising US Treasury yields in focus

Wall Street stocks slip, rising US Treasury yields in focus

By Chibuike Oguh

Tue May 20, 2025 6:53 PM

For a second day, the markets grappled with Moody’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating spending, most of the session modestly in the red. Then at 2 pm, all hell broke loose and all three indexes dove like a rock, the Dow down some 300 points by 3 pm when, again, all three began a rebound which resulted in much more modest losses at close. Perhaps what happened at 2 pm was the intense debate in Congress over Trump’s new huge tax bill which the experts forecast will add up to $5 trillion or about 14% to the debt, which definitely won’t do the credit rating any good.  

And there’s another much more optimistic explanation for the dip as expressed by today’s expert after breaking a 6-day winning streak on the S&P, “It’s a little bit of an excuse just after the run that we’ve had to hit the pause button and see markets consolidate a little bit and a little bit of churn under the surface.”  At 16.14 billion, volume came in below the 17.38 billion average. 

DJ: 42,792.07  +137.33      NAS: 19,215.46  +4.36        S&P: 5,963.60  +5.22          5/19

DJ: 42,677.24  -114.83       NAS: 19,142.71  -72.75       S&P: 5,940.46  -23.14         5/20

Tue 5-20-25 6:53 pm Wall Street stocks slip, rising US Treasury yields in focus | Reuters