Wall Street falls as tech stocks weaken on hawkish Fed stance, inflation worries

Wall Street’s main indexes fell in morning trading on Thursday after minutes from the Federal Reserve’s last meeting struck a hawkish note, signaling concerns over inflation, sending down shares of big technology companies.

Inflation

Devik Jain for Reuters:

Technology and consumer discretionary, the sectors hosting some of the biggest growth stocks including Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc, and Apple Inc, fell more than 1% each.

The Dow slipped from an intra-day record high after minutes from the Fed’s December meeting signaled the possibility of sooner-than-expected rate hikes and stimulus withdrawal to curb inflation.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq plunged more than 3% on Wednesday, its biggest one-day percentage drop since February.

“The hawkish tone of the FOMC (the Federal Open Market Committee) minutes suggests that the central bank is concerned about inflation,” said Nancy Davis, founder of Quadratic Capital Management. “We believe the Fed is likely to be more prudent and take longer than the market expects to evaluate the economy before embarking on a swift rate hiking cycle and balance sheet reduction plan.”

MacDailyNews Take: A healthy U.S. economy, consumer confidence, and consumer spending are essential to Apple, as America is Apple’s largest market, by far.

‘Tis best to get a handle on inflation, if you know how, while you still can.MacDailyNews, May 11, 2021

Inflation is repudiation. — Calvin Coolidge

When a business or an individual spends more than it makes, it goes bankrupt. When government does it, it sends you the bill. And when government does it for 40 years, the bill comes in two ways: higher taxes and inflation. Make no mistake about it, inflation is a tax and not by accident. — Ronald Reagan

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3 Comments

  1. Ugly several days for tech and not much better for the overall market (some financials did well, the outlier here and there did well). Apple dropped less than Q the day before but dropped worse today. Equalization in action I guess. The exchange rate can squeeze squeeze earnings for big tech that makes big money round the world.

    Short term will fluctuate. It is very difficult (the best market people of history say don’t even try) trying to pick tops and bottoms of a market or individual sector. A big institution broker (after leaving them) said: don’t try to beat the institution’s machines, you won’t. But the machines don’t compute longer spans of time. That is where you can beat the machines(the algos).

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