NEW YORK — Technology companies led stocks lower Thursday after another day of choppy trading on Wall Street as global markets keep swinging on uncertainty about where inflation, interest rates and the global economy are heading.
Oil’s back-and-forth moves were just some of the waves of reports that buffeted markets worldwide. The European Central Bank said high inflation will push it to wrap up its bond-buying program meant to boost its economy faster than expected. In the U.S., a report showed that consumer prices leaped 7.9% in February from a year earlier. It’s the sharpest spike since 1982, though the reading was largely within expectations.
Smaller company stocks held up better than the broader market. The Russell 2000 fell 4.62 points, or 0.2%, to 2,011.67. With gas prices soaring, Uber drivers are walking away from their jobs because they say they aren’t making much of a profit. Many investors said the report likely won’t change anything for the Federal Reserve, which meets next week to vote on interest rates. The wide expectation is that it will raise its key short-term rate by a quarter of a percentage point, which would be the first since 2018. Higher rates slow the economy, and the Fed is trying to raise them enough to tamp down inflation but not so much that it causes a recession.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which tracks expectations for inflation and economic growth, wavered immediately after the inflation report’s release. It rose to 2% from 1.94% late Wednesday.
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