Falling Tech Stocks Drag Indexes Down

Fed chief warns that there's a long way to go in fight against inflation
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jun 21, 2023 3:30 PM CDT
Falling Tech Stocks Drag Indexes Down
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange.   (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Tech stocks fell Wednesday, keeping Wall Street mixed and sapping more momentum from its five-week rally. The S&P in its 500 closed 0.5% lower Wednesday, falling 23.02 points to 4,365.69 in its third straight pullback after rallying last week to its highest level in more than a year. The Nasdaq composite fell 1.2%, more than the rest of the market. The Dow, which has less weighting with tech stocks, fell less. The Dow lost 102 points, or 0.3%, closing at 33,951.52.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that "the process of getting inflation back down to 2% has a long way to go,” the AP reports. He said again that a couple more rate increases may be on the way, though the speed of the hikes is likely to slow after moving at a furious rate since early last year. “Given how far we’ve come, it may make sense to move rates higher but to do so at a more moderate pace,” he said in testimony before a House committee. He likened it to slowing from 75 miles per hour on a highway to 50 and then even slower as the destination nears.

High-growth stocks tend to be some of the hardest hit by interest rate rises, and several Big Tech stocks were among the heaviest weights on the market. Nvidia fell 1.7%, giving back some of its spectacular gains from earlier this year driven by Wall Street's frenzy around the artificial-intelligence industry. The chip maker is still up nearly 200% for the year so far after saying AI would result in a tremendous leap in its revenue. Tesla dropped 5.5%, and Microsoft lost 1.3%. FedEx fell 2.5% after its forecast for upcoming earnings looked low against some analysts’ expectations. On the winning side of Wall Street, Dollar Tree rose 4.6% after it stuck with its forecast for earnings this fiscal year. (More stock market stories.)

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