S&P 500 opens in red for second straight day, closes in on 3,000

• Wall Street's main indexes opened in the negative territory.
• Markets remain risk-averse following mixed US macroeconomic data.
• Financial and energy shares post modest gains in early trade.

Major equity indexes in the US opened lower for the second straight day as investors remain cautious amid worries over the rising number of COVID-19 cases. The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), which closed the previous day 8% higher, is now gaining 6.5% on the day at 36.05.

Energy and financial stocks limit S&P 500's losses

As of writing, the S&P 500 was down 0.3% on the day at 3,040 points, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was losing 0.23% and the Nasdaq Composite was dropping 0.75%.

Earlier in the day, the data from the US showed that Durable Goods Orders in May rose by 15.8%. However, weekly Initial Jobless Claims arrived at 1.48 million to come in worse than the market expectation of 1.3 million.

Among the 11 major S&P 500 sectors, the Energy Index and the Financials Index both gain around 1%. On the other hand, the Utilities Index is down 1.15% as the top-decliner.