Pending home sales, RH earnings, Fed speaks: 3 things to watch

By Liz Moyer

Investing.com -- Stocks lost momentum on Tuesday as worries about the bank turmoil faded and bond yields rose, reflecting expectations that the Federal Reserve will continue to raise interest rates.

While tech stocks faltered, the 2-year Treasury yield rose above 4%, to 4.035%. The 10-year yield was 3.543%. 

Rising interest rates weigh on tech and other growth stocks. Futures traders are betting about evenly that the Fed will either raise interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point when it next meets in May or leave rates where they are now. But the economic forecasts of Fed policymakers, released last week along with a quarter-point hike, indicated the terminal rate will reach 5.1%, which bakes in the likelihood of another rate increase this year.

Before that meeting in May, the Fed will be seeing more data on labor trends, inflation, and lending activity by commercial banks. One of the worries to come out of the recent turmoil in the banking sector was that credit activity could be curtailed, crimping economic growth.

Here are three things that could affect markets tomorrow:

1. Pending home sales

The housing market has been pinched by rising mortgage rates and low sales inventory keeping buyers on the sidelines. Analysts are expecting pending home sales to fall 2.3% in February from the prior month. The data are released at 10:00 ET (14:00 GMT).

2. RH earnings

The furniture and home goods store RH (NYSE:RH) once known as Restoration Hardware is expected to report earnings per share of $3.33 on revenue of $777.3 million.

3. Fed speaks

The Fed's Vice Chair of Supervision Michael Barr is expected to continue into a second day of testimony on Capitol Hill, this time in the House. The regulator, joined by officials from the Treasury and the FDIC, is telling Congress about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and what the regulatory response was.