Wall Street turns flat after starting the day modestly lower

Following the three-day weekend, major equity indexes in the U.S. started the day in the negative territory on Tuesday but didn't have a difficult time recovering the losses. As of writing, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 were virtually unchanged on the day while the Nasdaq Composite was adding 0.07%.

Another sharp drop witnessed in the T-bond yields weighed on the rate-sensitive S&P 500 Financials Index, which was the worst performing sector with a 0.5% at the time of press. On the other hand, despite last week's disappointing retail sales data from the U.S., one of the biggest retailers, Walmart, reported an increase of 4.2% in its sales in 2018 and boosted the S&P 500 Consumer Staples Index to allow Wall Street to erase early losses.

Earlier in the day, Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester suggested that the Fed had the luxury of staying on hold with rate actions saying, "The Fed is not far behind or ahead of curve and can gather information on the economy before adjusting rate policy."