Dow drops 300 points, hurt by rising Treasury yields and a decline in Walmart: Live updates

U.S. stocks fell on Thursday as Treasury yields reversed course from the decline seen in the prior trading day following the Treasury Department’s debt buyback announcement.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 350 points, or 0.6%. The S&P 500 lost 0.3%, while the Nasdaq Composite slid 0.4%.

Bond yields advanced on Thursday, climbing back from Wednesday’s slide after the Treasury Department said it will at least double repurchases of 10-, 20- and 30-year debt in the next few months. That comes after the 30-year Treasury bond yield spiked to its highest level in nearly 20 years earlier this week.

The yield on the 10-year yield gained more than 4 basis points to 4.696%, while the 30-year yield added more than 4 basis points at 5.236%.

Also weighing on equities, oil prices rose again amid increasing tensions between Iran and the U.S. President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post late Wednesday that the U.S. would begin “most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country” against Iran. “This will be Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale,” he wrote.

West Texas Intermediate crude futures rose 2% to trade around $88 per barrel, while global benchmark Brent crude futures moved up 3% to above $94 a barrel.

A pullback in Walmart shares hit the broader market as well. The retail giant dropped 8% after its U.S. comparable sales missed analyst expectations, as did its adjusted earnings forecast for both the third quarter and the full year.

Wall Street is coming off a winning session, with the S&P 500 snapping a three-session losing streak, as yields on longer-dated U.S. Treasurys pulled back from multi-year highs after the government unveiled a plan to ease pressure from a recent bond market rout.

Michael Schumacher, former head of macro at Wells Fargo, doesn’t think bond market respite will last, however.

“I’m still negative. I think long-term rates go up for a few reasons. In the U.S. case in particular, there’s just a huge budget deficit. Not much sign that’s going to improve. On top of that, you’ve got defense spending going up,” he told CNBC in an interview. “I think that was the case really before the conflict in Iran, and that’s intensified.”

— CNBC’s Toby Burns contributed reporting.