The S&P fell from a record Thursday as investors stay glued to their screens to hear more about the Federal Reserve’s plan to wind down its pandemic-era stimulus measures.
Investors also had their eyes on new developments in Afghanistan, which added to the risk-off sentiment, after 12 U.S. service members were killed and 15 wounded outside the Kabul airport Thursday.
The Dow and the S&P lost 0.5% to 35,213.12 and 4,470.00, respectively. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 0.6% to 14,945.81.
Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed at records Wednesday with the broad market index briefly trading above 4,500 for the first time at one point.
More stocks tumbling
Diamondback Energy and Occidental Petroleum were down 2.5%. APA Corp. fell 2.4% and Halliburton lost 1.9%. Royal Caribbean shed 3.1%, while Carnival dropped 2.6% and Norwegian slipped 2.7%. Airlines broadly fell more than 1%.
Shares of discount retailers Dollar Tree and Dollar General dropped 12% and 3.7%, respectively, after reporting their quarterly results. Abercrombie & Fitch tumbled 10.3% as supply chain constraints and delayed back-to-school purchases hurt sales.
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Mixed economic data did little to change the sour mood
Initial jobless claims this week stood at 353,000, a slight increase from last week’s 349,000.
According to the Commerce Department’s second reading released on Thursday, economic growth totaled 6.6% in the second quarter, a slight revision upward from the 6.5% annual increase previously reported.
The Federal Reserve’s highly anticipated Jackson Hole symposium will take place virtually on Friday. Central bankers are expected to provide updates on their plan around tapering the Fed’s monthly bond purchases.
On the bright side
Salesforce pushed the Dow up, with shares about 2.6% higher on fiscal second-quarter earnings. Cloud company, NetApp, also added 4.7%.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose as high as 1.375% Thursday, the highest level since earlier in the month. Earlier, the benchmark yielded as high as 1.379% on the hawkish comments from the Fed officials, before pulling back to 1.344% in the afternoon.
Investors are now glued to their screens as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is slated to make remarks on Friday as part of the central bank’s summit. For one thing, the Fed has been buying at least $120 billion of bonds per month in an effort to bolster the economy in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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