(News Bulletin 247) – The New York Stock Exchange lost ground on Wednesday, as investors did not appreciate the unaccommodating tone used by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell before Congress in the midst of an economic slowdown.

At the end of the morning, the Dow Jones fell 0.1% to 34,008.8 points, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.9% to 13,546.8 points.

Wall Street did not consider the latest statements by Jerome Powell to be timely, indicating that further rate hikes were to be expected this year.

‘Almost all members of the monetary policy committee (FOMC) believe that it will be necessary to raise interest rates a little more by the end of the year,’ he told parliamentarians .

Investors also didn’t like Powell’s assertion that there was ‘still a long way to go’ to bring inflation back below the 2% target.

From the perspective of some analysts, the prospect of further rate hikes increases the chances of policy error, including an economic hard landing.

Despite this, six of the 11 major S&P sector indices are moving in the green this morning, with the biggest increase going to that of energy (+1.1%) against a backdrop of recovery in crude prices.

The values ​​of technologies (-1.6%) and telecoms (-1.4%) show, on the other hand, the heaviest declines of the day.

The releases observed on the stock market and the accumulation of fears that the Fed will continue to tighten its policy have caused a rise in the yield of ten-year Treasuries, which is now flirting with 3.78%.

After reacting upwards to Powell’s latest announcements, the dollar is falling again against the euro, in the area of ​​1.0955.

On the values ​​front, Tesla dropped 2.6% in the wake of a downgrade from Barclays, which believes that the recent rally in the stock does not take into account many short-term uncertainties.

The cohort of other stocks related to artificial intelligence also suffered profit taking, as evidenced by the declines of AMD (-5.4%) or Nvidia (-3.7%).

Copyright (c) 2023 News Bulletin 247. All rights reserved.