US stocks slip during early trade, weighed down by technology shares

Major US equity indices slipped during the opening hour of trade, with weakness in technology shares weighing on the broader market.

A sharp drop in the shared of Netflix Inc., led by disappointing quarterly results, was seen influencing shares of Internet-related companies. Corporate earnings report by a batch of major companies would remain the main attraction and set the near-term tone for the markets. 

Meanwhile, investors also seemed reluctant to place aggressive bets ahead of the Fed Chair Jerome Powell's testimony to the Senate Banking Committee and further collaborated to the early decline. 

On the economic data front, a better-than-expected US industrial production data was partly offset by a slight disappointment from capacity utilization rate and did little to provide any meaningful support.

At the time of writing this report, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down around 50-points to 25,012 and the broader S&P 500 Index dipped over 4-points to 2,794. Meanwhile, tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index lost over 20-points and weakened farther below the 7,800 mark.