US stocks open mixed amid worries about economic growth

ANKARA

US stocks opened lower on Wednesday, except the Dow Jones, amid worries about economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic would be slower than anticipated.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 22 points, or 0.06%, to 35,122 at 9.42 a.m. EDT, but the S&P 500 was down 6 points, or 0.13%, to 4,513.

The Nasdaq fell 62 points, or 0.4%, to 15,312 with the US' largest cryptocurrency exchange platform, Coinbase, seeing shares off 3%.

After its worst single-day decline since May 19, Bitcoin was trading around $46,560 with a 7.9% loss, while some digital coins were down as much as 30%.

Despite kicking off a strong rally on July 20, the price of Bitcoin dived almost $10,000 in 12 hours Tuesday before recovering a bit, but the turmoil caused a $330 billion market cap loss to the global crypto market.

Oil prices recovered around 1.2% with Brent crude trading at $72.51 per barrel shortly after the first bell on Wall Street and West Texas Intermediate at $69.28.

Precious metals, on the other hand, were down again with gold falling to $1,782 per ounce with a 0.65% decline, and silver losing 1.4% to $23.97.

The yield on 10-year US Treasury notes fell 1% to 1.358%, while the dollar index was up 0.23% to 92.72.

The VIX volatility index, also known as the fear index added 2.2% to 18.54 amid uncertainty surrounding US economic recovery, after weak nonfarm payrolls data last Friday that showed only a 235,000 increase in August, against a market consensus of 750,000.

The US gross domestic product (GDP) forecast for 2021 was lowered to 5.7%, from 6.2%, by Goldman Sachs on Tuesday.

It marked the second time in a month that the New York-based multinational investment bank and financial services company cut its GDP forecast for the US after Aug. 18 when it steeply lowered its third-quarter estimate to 5.5% from 9%.