Wall Street opens in the red

The main indices on Wall Street began Tuesday’s session on the back foot ahead of Congressional testimony from both Fed chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Shortly after the opening bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.17% at 32,675 while the S&P 500 dropped 0.14% to 3,934 and the Nasdaq fell 0.07% to 13,368. Meanwhile, shares in Reddit darling GameStop Corp (NYSE:GME) made a strong start to the session as investors awaited its earnings, with the stock rising 2.8% to US$198.85 in early deals. Computing giant Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) was also in the green, up 1.2% at US$238.68 amid chatter it could swoop in with a billion dollar bid for video gamer chat platform Discord. 8:00am: Wall Street to turn mostly lower It is looking like a “risk-off” day for US markets today although the tech rally still has some legs. Spread betting quotes point to the Dow Jones industrial average tumbling 107 points to 32,264 and the S&P 500 falling 12 points to 3,929 but the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 is expected to eke out an 8 point gain to 13,095. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell are set to face law-makers in Congress today “It will be interesting to see whether Yellen will push for more spending given the sky-high government debt. Powell will probably reiterate the same message he did ad the FOMC presser last week, namely that although the economy is progressing well, it is still far from complete and so the Fed will continue to provide monetary support,” suggested Fawad Razaqzada at ThinkMarkets. When trading starts, attention may be focused on Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT), which reportedly is in talks to buy Discord, the chat platform favoured by gamers, for a mind-boggling US$10bn+. Talking of gamers, GameStop is set to declare its earnings after the close of trading today, which will either get the stock’s many fans on Reddit excited or they could go on ignoring the earnings (or lack of same) of the retail dinosaur. Three things to watch for on Tuesday: Today’s earnings diary will feature numbers from software group Adobe Inc (NASDAQ:ADBE), information firm IHS Markit Ltd (NYSE:INFO) and food test kit maker Neogen Corp (NASDAQ:NEOG) Meanwhile, focus may also be on Bitcoin after the cryptocurrency suffered its biggest drop in a month amid a slowdown of inflows into the digital token On the macro front, investors may be interested in the latest Richmond Fed manufacturing index for March as well as a number of speeches from various Fed representatives