NEW YORK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th November, 2021) US stocks struggled to regain their footing on Monday as inflation fears continued to weigh on Wall Street after the end of a multi-week rally last week.
The three major US equity indexes - the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite - all closed barely changed as worries about a faster-than-anticipated rate hike by the Federal Reserve to cool price pressures faced-off with positive vibes from a $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal signed by President Joe Biden.
"The US economy is a story of two economies that have an overall strong growth outlook for the next year," Ed Moya, analyst at online trading platform OANDA, said.� "Broad-based price increases are hurting several Americans. At some point, the Fed will have to tighten financial conditions and that has some investors hesitating remaining full tilt with stocks."
The Dow, a blue-chip index which groups mostly industrial stocks, finished down 13 points, or 0.04%, at 36,087. The index closed 0.6% down last week after a five-week rally that delivered a net gain of almost 6%.
The S&P 500, which represents the top 500 US stocks, settled flat at 4,683 points. The index fell 0.3% last week after a 5-week run that boosted it by 8%.
Nasdaq Composite, which groups Big Tech Names such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google, finished down 7 points, or 0.04%, at 15,854.� The tech-laced index fell 0.7% last week, after a five-week rally that sent it up almost 10%.
Stocks fell last week after the Labor Department reported that the US Consumer Price Index, which represents a basket of products ranging from gasoline and health care to groceries and rents, rose 6.2% during the year to October. It was the fastest growth of the so-called CPI since November 1990, an acceleration driven mostly by pump prices of fuel running at seven-year highs.
