by Caroline Valetkevitch
NEW YORK, June 9 (Reuters) – The New York Stock Exchange ended lower on Thursday as investors sounded cautious ahead of the release of monthly consumer price data on Friday.
The Dow Jones index fell -1.94%, or 638.11 points, to 32,272.79 points.
The broader S&P-500 fell 97.95 points, or -2.38%, to 4,017.82 points.
The Nasdaq Composite fell for its part by 332.05 points (-2.75%) to 11,754.23 points.
All eleven major S&P 500 sectors ended in the red, with the communications services sector posting the largest decline.
The yield on ten-year U.S. Treasuries made investors nervous as it rose more than three basis points to 3.0622% during the session, its highest since May 11.
Rising oil prices also contributed to investor jitters ahead of the release of the monthly consumer price index.
The data will be released on Friday and is expected to show, according to the Reuters consensus, a 0.7% rise in consumer prices in May.
“We are preparing for what we may learn about inflation tomorrow,” said Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment Counsel.
“I think it will be mixed. If the total is high and the base number shows a downward trend, I think the markets could rally, because it will show that things are turning around slightly.”
Investors fear that a rise in inflation will push the US Federal Reserve, which meets on June 14 and 15, to continue raising interest rates.
In stocks, Alibaba ended lower after its payments subsidiary, Ant Group, announced that it had no intention of launching an IPO project.
(With contributions from Devik Jain and Mehnaz Yasmin in Bangalore and Chuck Mikolajczak in New Yor; French version Camille Raynaud)