us stocks turned higher friday afternoon despite a jump in the cost of deutsche banks creditdefault swaps helping to reignite bankingsector worries the dow jones industrial average sp 500 and nasdaq composite were on track for weekly gains for the week the dow is heading for a 11 rise while the sp 500 was on track to gain 13 and the nasdaq was on pace to advance 16 according to factset data at last check us stocks turned modestly higher friday afternoon and were on track for weekly gains even as worries over the banking system lingered bank concerns have cast a heavy cloud over the market with investors worried about weak links said yungyu ma chief investment strategist at bmo wealth management in a phone interview friday ma said he expects investors will be looking to sell potentially into any rallies until some of these clouds are lifted shares of germanys deutsche bank ag dbkxedropped friday after the cost of insuring the bank against a credit default jumped the banks creditdefault swaps had risen to the highest level since late 2018 according to a reuters report friday treasury secretary janet yellen announced friday she called an unscheduled meeting of the financial stability oversight council or fsoc which was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to help the government combat threats to financial stability clearly somebody thinks there are some concerns there said randy frederick managing director of trading and derivatives at charles schwab the problems facing european banks stem back to the era of negative interest rates which set banks up for large losses on their bond holdings he said the selloff in deutsche bank shares weighed on banks in the us and europe as bankingsector fears reemerged shares of ubs group ubs which recently agreed to buy rival credit suisse group were trading lower other major european lenders includingitalys unicredit spa and spains banco santander sa  also saw their shares sink the thing thats important to know about financials is there probably are banks that have problems but there are others that dont frederick told marketwatch during a phone interview people need to do some research the sp 500s financial sector was trading down 02 friday afternoon according to factset data at last check while bankingsector woes have hammered the financial sector this month the outperformance of megacap technology stocks and other sectors has helped to limit losses for the broad us equities market the sp 500 index has edged down just 01 so far in march factset data show at last check concerns about the fragility of the banking sector have been percolating following a year of the federal reserves aggressive interest rate hikes on wednesday the fed announced that it hiked its policy rate by a quarter point to a range of 475 to 5 while projecting it could deliver one more 25 basispoint hike in 2023 in his first comments since the rapid collapse of silicon valley bank two weeks ago st louis federal reserve president james bullard said friday the latest drop in treasury yields could help cushion some of the stress facing the banking sector yields on the 2year treasury note and 10year treasury note each fell friday in their third straight week of declines according to dow jones market data twoyear yields slid to 3777 on friday the lowest level since september based on 3 pm eastern time levels while 10year treasury yields dropped to 3379 their lowest rate since january readred alert recession signals gundlach expects the fed to cut rates substantially soon in us economic data released friday a report on sales of durable goods in the us showed orders fell 1 in february largely because of waning demand for passenger planes and new cars meanwhile the sp global flash us servicessector index rose to an 11month high of 538 in march the role of regional banks in the us economy is huge said sandi bragar chief client officer at wealth management firm aspiriant in a phone interview friday bragar said she worries that recent regional bank failures will result in a pullback in lending that leads to slower economic growth and potentially a recession our stance has been to be very diversified and we have been remaining on the defensive side of things she said within equities that has meant holding highquality companies that should be resilient in poor economic times including stocks in areas such as healthcare information technology and consumer staples said bragar this content was created by marketwatch which is operated by dow jones  co marketwatch is published independently from dow jones newswires and the wall street journal