NEW YORK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th September, 2021) Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P500 indexes suffered their biggest weekly loss in three months as investors fretted on Friday about unrelenting inflation in a recovering economy saddled with pandemic-related and other costs.
The Dow, the broadest equity barometer on the New York Stock Exchange, as well as the S&P 500, which groups the exchange's top 500 stocks, had their sharpest weekly deficit since mid-June after the US Labor Department reported that producer prices rose their most in over a decade in August.
"Wall Street was grasping for reasons to be optimistic," Ed Moya, analyst at New York-based online trading platform OANDA, said.
The Dow fell 272 points, or 0.8 percent, on the day to settle at 34,608. For the week, it lost 2.2%, its most since the week to June 11.
The S&P 500 closed at 4,460, down 33 points, or 0.7 percent. For the week, the blue-chip indicator lost 1.7%, also its most since the week to June 11.
The Nasdaq Composite Index, which includes stocks of technology giants such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google, settled at 15,116, down 133 points, or 0.9 percent. For the week, the tech-heavy index fell 1.6%, its most since the week to July 9.
Stocks sank after the Labor Department's data showed the US Producer price Index jumped by 8.3 percent for the year in August, its most since 2010.� That caused US Treasury yields to spike as investors speculated again on whether the Federal Reserve would step in to tighten its ultra-accommodative monetary policy which has been blamed for fueling inflation since the COVID-19 outbreak.
The Federal Reserve has been buying $120 billion in bonds and other assets since the COVID-19 outbreak of March 2020 to support the economy. It has also been keeping interest rates at virtually zero levels over the past 18 months.
The question of when the Federal Reserve ought to taper its stimulus and raise interest rates has been hotly debated in recent months as economic recovery conflicts with a resurgence of the coronavirus' Delta variant. The argument for a taper was, however, weakened just a week ago after US jobs growth for August came in at 70 percent below economists' target.
