NEW YORK: Wall Street’s main indexes fell on Wednesday after latest inflation numbers hit expectations of a bigger interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve, while odds of Democrat Kamala Harris winning the US presidency rose following a televised debate.
Consumer prices in the United States rose slightly in August, but underlying inflation remained sticky, which could discourage the Fed from delivering a half-point interest rate cut next week.
Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott, said the chances of a 50-basis-point cut seems to have been “taken off the table ... the core month-over-month showed acceleration and therefore coming in a little hotter and that seemed to put the market back on its heels.”
The consumer price index (CPI) increased 0.2% last month after climbing 0.2% in July, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said.
The core figure, excluding volatile food and energy components, rose 0.3% on a monthly basis against forecasts of a 0.2% rise.
Traders now see an 85% chance of the Fed cutting interest rates by 25 basis points, according to CME’s FedWatch.
All 11 major S&P sectors were trading lower, with financials the worst hit, down 2%.
Big US lenders extended their declines, sparked by warnings of a slower-than-anticipated recovery in investment banking and an expected hit to interest income from looming rate cuts.
Market sentiment was also driven by political developments after Harris put her Republican rival Donald Trump on the defensive in a combative presidential debate on Tuesday.
After the debate, pricing for a Trump victory slipped by 6 cents to 47 cents on online betting site PredictIt, while climbing to 57 cents from 53 cents for a Harris win.
Stocks expected to perform well under a Trump presidency fell, with cryptocurrency and blockchain-related shares and prison operators lower. Trump Media & Technology Group slumped 13.3%.
Meanwhile, solar stocks Sunrun and SolarEdge Technologies, seen as benefiting from a Harris administration, rose about 6% each.
While the debate offered Wall Street little clarity on key policy issues, some market watchers see Harris’ proposals to raise the corporate tax rate as likely to hit company profits, while Trump’s tougher stance on tariffs could stoke inflation.
At 11:30 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 564.48 points, or 1.39%, to 40,172.90, the S&P 500 lost 64.21 points, or 1.17%, to 5,431.46 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 125.04 points, or 0.73%, to 16,900.84.
GameStop dropped almost 15% after the videogame retailer said it had filed for an offering of up to 20 million shares and reported lower second-quarter revenue.
Shares of lithium miners jumped after Chinese battery giant CATL said it plans to make adjustments to lithium carbonate production in Yichun. Albemarle, one of the largest lithium miners in the world, jumped 10.3%.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 2.71-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 2.05-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted six new 52-week highs and 17 new lows, while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 23 new highs and 107 new lows.