Stocks fall as Wall Street heads for another losing week
By STAN CHOE
AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are falling again on Wall Street Friday, and the S&P 500 is on track for its first back-to-back weekly drop since the turn of the year.
Wall Street’s benchmark index was 0.8% lower in early trading, a day after sliding to its worst loss in four weeks on worries inflation isn’t slowing as quickly and as smoothly as hoped. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 152 points, or 0.5%, at 33,544, as of 9:45 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.1% lower.
Stocks have hit turbulence in February after shooting higher in January on hopes that cooling inflation could get the Federal Reserve to take it easier on interest rates and that the economy could avoid a severe recession. Reports recently, though, have shown more strength than expected in everything from the job market to retail sales to inflation itself.
That’s forced a drastic recalibration on Wall Street as investors move their forecasts for interest rates closer to the “higher for longer” stance that the Federal Reserve has long been espousing. High rates can drive down inflation, but they also hurt investment prices and risk causing a severe recession.
Economists at Goldman Sachs added one more hike by the Fed in June to their forecast, meaning they see its key short-term rate ultimately rising to a range of 5.25% to 5.50%. That rate was at virtually zero a year ago, and it hasn’t topped 5.25% since the dot-com bubble was deflating in 2001.
The fear is that if inflation proves even stickier than expected, it could push the Fed to get even more aggressive than it’s prepared the market for. Such movements have been most clear in the bond market, where yields have soared this month on expectations for a firmer Fed.
The two-year Treasury yield rose to 4.68% from 4.62% late Thursday and from less than 4.10% earlier this month. It’s approaching its heights from November, when it reached its highest point since 2007.
The 10-year yield, which helps set rates for mortgages and other important loans, rose to 3.88% from 3.84% late Thursday.
Still offering some support to the stock market despite those worries are remaining hopes that the economy can avoid a worst-case recession. Jobs are still plentiful, and shoppers are still spending to prop up the most important part of the economy, consumer spending.
But critics say many of those areas also tend to be among the last to feel the effects of higher interest rates and may still topple. And the strength in the economy has been continuing even after the Fed has already raised rates at the most aggressive pace in decades.
“Fed tightening always ‘breaks’ something,” investment strategist Michael Hartnett wrote in a BofA Global Research report. He said the S&P 500 could fall to 3,800 by March 8, which would mark a drop of a little more than 7% from its closing level on Thursday.
In stock markets abroad, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 1.3%. Losses were amplified by news that a major tech industry dealmaker, Bao Fan, apparently has gone missing.
Shares in one of China’s top investment banks, China Renaissance, plunged Friday after the company said in a filing to Hong Kong’s stock exchange that it had lost touch with Bao, its founder. Bao’s disappearance follows a crackdown on technology companies in the past two years that officials in China said had been wrapped up.
Stocks also mostly fell across Asian and European markets.
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AP Business Writers Elaine Kurtenbach and Matt Ott contributed.
