Apple and other U.S. stocks ended sharply lower on Wednesday, with the Nasdaq dropping more than 3% and the Dow falling for a fifth straight day after historic U.S. inflation data did little to ease investor worries over the outlook for the American economy.
Caroline Valetkevitch for Reuters:
The benchmark S&P 500 lost 1.7% and is now down 18% from its Jan. 3 record closing high.
The Labor Department’s monthly consumer price index (CPI)… increased 0.3% last month, the smallest gain since last August, while economists polled by Reuters had forecast consumer prices gaining 0.2% in April.
“It did not dispel the notion that there’s more to go in terms of reining in inflation,” said Quincy Krosby, chief equity strategist at LPL Financial in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Apple shares dropped 5.2% and were the biggest weight on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 indexes. “There is much focus right now on Apple,” Krosby said. “Given its weighting, Apple is the bellwether for the market from many perspectives.”
Investor concerns about whether the Fed will continue to hike interest rates aggressively have hit growth stocks especially hard. The consumer discretionary and technology sectors fell about 3% each, leading S&P 500 sector declines.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 326.63 points, or 1.02%, to 31,834.11, the S&P 500 lost 65.87 points, or 1.65%, to 3,935.18 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 373.44 points, or 3.18%, to 11,364.24.
MacDailyNews Take: This too shall pass.
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