Dollar rebounds, Treasury yields off lows, after Trump comments

By Sinead Carew

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street indexes fell along with U.S. Treasury yields on Thursday on safe-haven demand spurred by geopolitical worries while the U.S. dollar rebounded from its previous day's slide as investors discounted remarks by President Donald Trump.

The biggest drag on the S&P 500 was financial stocks as investors moved to safe-haven assets. Although bank earnings beat estimates, weak loan growth was also in focus.

The yield on U.S. 10-year Treasury notes recorded its steepest single-week decline since early 2016 due to demand for longer-dated government bonds spurred by worries over potential U.S. military strikes against Syria and North Korea.

Kate Warne, principal investment strategist at Edward Jones in St. Louis, said the dip in bond yields put pressure on stocks ahead of a holiday weekend in the United States.

"What we've seen is investors from the rest of the world putting more money in U.S. Treasuries" due to geopolitical concerns, Warne said.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 60.61 points, or 0.29 percent, to 20,531.25, the S&P 500 lost 6.65 points, or 0.28 percent, to 2,338.28 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 7.32 points, or 0.13 percent, to 5,828.84.

The dollar index <=USD>, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six trade-weighted peers, was up 0.5 percent, after a 0.6 percent decline on Wednesday marked its biggest one-day fall in three weeks.

The U.S. dollar had tumbled Wednesday after Trump told the Wall Street Journal the greenback was "getting too strong" and would eventually hurt the U.S. economy.

"Clearly, I think (the dollar) was oversold yesterday," said Peter Ng, senior currency trader at Silicon Valley Bank in Santa Clara, California. "The market was very sensitive to headlines given how nervous it has become due to geopolitical risk."

The 10-year Treasury yield fell 14 basis points in a shortened trading week, which was the biggest weekly decline since the week of Jan. 8, 2016, Reuters data showed.

Earlier in the day Treasury yields had hit session highs, after a University of Michigan survey showed U.S. consumer sentiment unexpectedly improved in early April.

Before the data, Trump's comment that he favoured low interest rates had intensified this week's bond market rally that was underpinned by geopolitical worries.

The MSCI all-world stock index was down 0.3 percent, well below its session high.

In commodities, oil prices were little changed on modest volume on Thursday, in a week in which crude benchmarks recouped more of March's losses on increased hopes world supply and demand were nearing balance. U.S. crude ended up 0.13 percent at $53.18 a barrel, while global benchmark Brent settled up 0.05 percent at $55.89.

Gold was up 0.03 percent at $1,286.11 an ounce after hitting a five-month high earlier in the session.

(Additional reporting by Dion Rabouin in New York, Jamie McGeever, Abhinav Ramnarayan in London; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Chizu Nomiyama)