Stocks fell again on Wall Street on Friday, capping the worst weekly drop for the Standard & Poor’s 500 since the start of the pandemic.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 450.02 points, or 1.3%, to 34,265.37 on Friday; it also notched its third straight week of losses.The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 385.10, or 2.7%, to 13,768.92. With investors expecting the Fed to begin raising rates as soon as its March policy meeting, shares in pricey tech companies and other expensive growth stocks have looked relatively less attractive.
Inflation fears and concerns about higher interest rates have prompted a shift in the broader market after a solid year of gains in 2021. Technology stocks and consumer-focused companies have fallen out of favor. Energy is the only S&P 500 sector showing a gain; household good makers and utilities, which are typically considered less-risky investments, held up better than the rest of the market.
The Fed is now expected to raise interest rates earlier and more often than it had previously signaled in order to fight a surge in inflation that threatens to derail a further economic recovery. The Fed’s benchmark short-term interest rate is currently in a range of 0% to 0.25%. Investors now see a nearly 70% chance that the Fed will raise the rate by at least one percentage point by the end of the year, according to CME Group’s Fed Watch tool.
“In our view, the biggest near-term risk is right in front of us: that the Fed is seriously behind the curve and has to get serious about fighting inflation,” economists at BofA Global Research led by Ethan Harris wrote in a report. “It has been a long time since markets have had to deal with a serious inflation-fighting Fed.”
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