Wall Street wide drop: Nasdaq down more than one percent

Wall Street has spent the past few weeks catching parts of the stock market crash that gave a poor start to the year, and on Tuesday the Nasdaq barely came out of “correction mode” — defined as less than 10 percent of its “all-time high” listing. In November last year.

But the mood is bad on Wednesday. This is what the three leading indicators looked like when the trading day ended:

• The broad S&P 500 index fell 0.63 percent
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.19 percent
• The Nasdaq Technology Index fell 1.21 percent

The decline was thus the worst for the Nasdaq tech index, which was pulled by several heavyweights. Amazon shares fell as much as 1.78 percent, while Apple and Tesla shares fell 0.66 and 0.51 percent, respectively, during the trading day.

The bank’s shares also had a rough day on the stock exchange. Morgan Stanley shares fell 1.69 percent, while Citigroup shares fell 2.67 percent.

Employment as expected

Recently, attention has focused on the fixed income market and the difference between short and long-term interest rates in the United States. On Tuesday night, the US two-year interest rate rose above the ten-year rate for the first time since August 2019, albeit only for a short time.

On Wednesday, the “ten-year-old” got taller again, but only slightly. In the last 50 years, the yield curve has inverted before every recession, i.e. a sharp contraction in which the economy has been shrinking for at least two consecutive quarters.

On Tuesday, markets in the United States appeared to have been reassured that ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine had raised hopes of diplomatic progress, but the attacks continued on Wednesday. The United States, Britain and Ukraine are all skeptical about taking Russia’s word for good fish when the country proposes reducing its size.

Two days before the March government employment report, the last before the central bank’s interest rate meeting in May, figures came from human resources firm ADP showing that US companies created 455,000 new jobs this month — roughly in line with estimates, according to the CNBC.

Companies are hiring, especially service providers who had the most to catch up due to setbacks early in the pandemic. However, a tight labor market remains an obstacle to continued growth in consumer-oriented industries, said Nella Richardson, ADP’s chief economist. (Terms)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and/or our suppliers. We would like you to share our cases using a link that leads directly to our pages. All or part of the Content may not be copied or otherwise used with written permission or as permitted by law. For additional terms look here.