By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com — Monday’s Dow tumbled as tech investors abandoned the market in wake of rising U.S. Treasury yields. This was a day before a new inflation data that will show prices continue to flirt at multi-decade highs.  

They fell by 1.2% (413 points), the fell 1.6% (and the plummeted 2.2%).

After snapping a winning streak of three weeks last week in technology stocks, the market started this week with a slow start. Treasury yields gained on expectation of tighter Federal Reserve monetary policy next month.

“U.S. bond yields are on the rise as investors continue to digest the Fed’s more hawkish position. As a result, the 10-year yield has pushed from 2.40% to 2.74% in the past week,” Stifel said in a note.

The Fed’s plan to curb inflation will come under added scrutiny on Tuesday as the U.S. is expected report that the pace of inflation in March rose at annual rate of 8.4%, a four-decade high.

Microsoft (NASDAQ) fell more than 3% after UBS predicted that Office 365, which is the second largest business of the tech giant, would see less growth as the benefits from the work-from-home trend and the pandemic.

Facebook (NASDAQ) and Alphabet were both down by more than 22%

Twitter (NYSE) meanwhile bucked the wider trend lower after Tesla’s chief executive Elon Musk reversed his decision to join its board. This allowed Musk to purchase more shares of Twitter. Musk would not have been able to hold more than 14.9% of Twitter if he had joined the board.  

As sentiment was hit by the downgrading of Nvidia (NASDAQ) from outperform to neutral, Baird also reduced its price target to $225. The stock fell more than 5% after it was reported that the company had cut the price target to $360.

Baird flagged order cancellations for Nvidia’s consumer GPUs, and said the upcoming fork for cryptocurrency Ethereum could further dent demand.

The banks and financials outperformed the wider market by 0.2%. This was due to rising yields before the beginning of the quarterly earnings season.

JPMorgan reports its results every Wednesday (NYSE:). Citigroup (NYSE:), Wells Fargo (NYSE :),Goldman Sachs NYSE 🙂 and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: ) Report on Thursday

The market was also affected by energy stocks, even though oil prices were under pressure due to concerns over the effect of China lockdowns on Chinese demand.

Amongst the largest decliners of the sector were Occidental Petroleum, Diamondback Energy (NASDAQ;), and ConocoPhillips.  

Other news: Sony (NYSE:) detailed plans for an additional $1 million investment in Epic Games, in a deal which further extends its partnership with the videogame maker.