by Lewis Krauskopf, Devik Jain and Anisha Sircar
June 22 (Reuters) – The New York Stock Exchange ended slightly lower on Wednesday after a turbulent session, punctuated by a hearing of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell before the Senate, where he reaffirmed that the bank US central was “strongly determined” to fight inflation.
The Dow Jones index fell -0.15%, or 47.12 points, to 30,483.13 points.
The broader S&P-500 fell 4.9 points, or -0.13%, to 3,759.89 points.
The Nasdaq Composite dropped 16.22 points (-0.15%) to 11,053.08 points.
During a hearing before the US Senate Banking Committee, Jerome Powell said the Fed was “strongly committed” to bringing inflation down while adding that further rate hikes would continue to depend on indicators and developments. economic prospects.
“We’re not trying to cause, and I don’t think we need to cause, a recession,” he said, though he admitted a recession was “certainly a possibility” due the central bank’s fight against inflation at its highest for forty years.
“It is essential that we bring inflation down if we are to have a prolonged period of good labor market conditions that benefit everyone,” the Fed Chairman said.
The main indexes of the New York Stock Exchange reduced their losses after his intervention, the Nasdaq even moving into positive territory, reflecting the questions of investors, who are trying to assess how far the shares could fall in the face of the risks posed by weigh on growth the rate hikes scheduled by the Fed.
The S&P 500 index fell more than 20% in mid-June from its closing peak on January 3, which corresponds to the definition of a bear market. It also posted its biggest weekly percentage decline since March 2020 last week.
“The markets continue to be volatile. We’re not out of the woods yet. (..) The concerns are still there,” said King Lip, strategist at Baker Avenue Asset Management in San Francisco.
Defensive stocks such as real estate, health care or utilities have garnered the largest increases in the S&P. The energy sector, on the other hand, suffered from the drop in crude oil prices.
The Moderna laboratory climbed 4.67% after announcing that a new version of its COVID-19 vaccine had obtained a strong immune response against the new Omicron subvariants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
(written by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)