PARIS (Reuters) – The New York Stock Exchange opened lower on Friday for the final session of a year marked by turmoil in financial markets due to the war in Ukraine, record inflation, a policy restrictive monetary policy and fears of recession.
In early trading, the Dow Jones index lost 120.08 points, or 0.36%, to 33,100.72 points and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 0.56% to 3,827.46 points.
The Nasdaq Composite lost 0.89%, or 93.17 points, to 10,384.91.
For 2022 as a whole, the three major Wall Street indices are heading for their first annual loss after three years of uninterrupted growth.
The S&P-500, down 19% year-on-year at this point, and the Nasdaq, down 33%, are expected to see their biggest decline since the 2008 financial crisis.
US stock market indices were penalized over the past year by a 425 basis point hike in US Federal Reserve (Fed) rates between March and December, the fastest pace since the 1980s. sought to rein in high inflation linked to soaring commodity and food prices amid rapid economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The most important fact of the year is this: the era of easy money is over, and for good. (…) Recession, inflation, stagflation will probably dominate the headlines l next year,” predicts Ipek Ozkardeskaya, an analyst at Swissquote.
In stocks, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta Platforms fell 0.91% to 1.63% in the wake of the rise in US ten-year and two-year bond yields, the market anticipating a peak in Fed rates of 4.96% mid-2023 against 4.25-4.5% currently.
Shaw Communications jumped 9.92% after the approval in Canada of the merger agreement with Rogers Communications for 14.8 billion dollars.
(Written by Claude Chendjou, edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)