NEW YORK: The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq dropped to a more than one-month low on Thursday as a jump in Treasury yields knocked down growth stocks after the Federal Reserve signaled another rate hike this year.
Rate-sensitive stocks including Tesla, Meta Platforms, Amazon.com, Alphabet, and Nvidia fell between 1.9% and 3.3% as the two-year and 10-year Treasury yields scaled multi-year highs. Semiconductor firm Broadcom fell 3.7%, pulling the Philadelphia chip index down 1.2%, after a report showed Google executives had discussed dropping the company as a supplier of artificial intelligence chips as early as 2027.
Consumer discretionary led a broad-based decline in the major S&P 500 sector indexes, down 2.2%.
The Fed delivered a widely anticipated pause on Wednesday, though its updated quarterly projections showed benchmark rate could be hiked one more time in 2023 to a peak range of 5.50%-5.75%, while monetary policy could stay tighter than was expected through 2024.
“This is a continuation of the Fed’s effective strategy to talk hawkish. We got a pause and a threat that if inflation doesn’t continue to moderate, the Fed’s prepared to act,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman at Great Hill Capital LLC. Adding to rate jitters, US jobless claims unexpectedly fell last week, while a surprise drop in existing home sales in August and a worse-than-expected fall in Philadelphia Fed’s business conditions index in September fueled recession concerns.
“With interest rates like that and with other measures of the economy showing weaker-than-expected readings, the increasing concern is that we are headed for a recession,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research.
The CBOE volatility index, known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge”, hit its highest level in nearly one month, reflecting rising investor anxiety.
Traders’ bets on the benchmark rate remaining unchanged in November and December stood at 74% and 55%, respectively, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.
Weak performance of recent listings after their debut highs dampened hopes of a likely revival in the initial public offering market amid high interest rates and broader market declines.
Marketing automation firm Klaviyo’s and Instacart fell 1.2% and 0.1%, respectively, while Arm Holdings shed 4.8% to drop below its IPO price of $51 per share.
At 12:03 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 191.90 points, or 0.56%, at 34,248.98, the S&P 500 was down 49.20 points, or 1.12%, at 4,353.00, and the Nasdaq Composite was down 178.26 points, or 1.32%, at 13,290.87.
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