NEW YORK (Reuters) – The New York Stock Exchange ended lower on Monday after hesitating during the session on the conclusions to be drawn from statements by Federal Reserve officials on the pace of interest rate hikes, after the momentum of optimism that fueled its rally last week.
The Dow Jones index fell 0.63%, or 211.16 points, to 33,536.7 points.
The broader S&P-500 lost 35.68 points, or 0.89%, to 3,957.25 points.
The Nasdaq Composite fell for its part by 127.11 points (-1.12%) to 11,196.22 points.
Wall Street had started the week in the red after remarks made on Sunday by one of the governors of the Fed, Christopher Waller, who said that a possible slowdown in the pace of its monetary policy tightening in December should not be interpreted as a ” relaxation” in its commitment to fight inflation.
Christopher Waller also felt that the markets would be better off focusing on the upcoming “rate peak”, which he said was still “distant”, and not on the magnitude of each increase, while stressing that the figures for the better than expected inflation published last week, which precipitated the stock market rally, were not enough to draw any conclusions.
New York indexes briefly dipped back into the green after a statement by Federal Reserve Vice Chair Lael Brainard that the Fed should soon begin to taper the pace of its rate hikes, before investors take notice. opt for caution and take their profits while waiting to see more clearly.
“There is going to be a lot to digest in terms of statements from Fed officials but also economic data this week,” commented Yung-Yu Ma, chief investment strategist at BMO Wealth Management.
The week will be marked in particular by the publication of retail sales in October in the United States, on Wednesday.
Amazon lost 2.28% after a New York Times report said the e-commerce giant is preparing to lay off some 10,000 employees starting this week in anticipation of an economic slowdown.
Shares of Biogen and Eli Lilly gained 3.32% and 1.35% respectively, taking advantage of the failure of two clinical trials on an Alzheimer’s drug candidate from their Swiss rival Roche.
(Report by Lewis Krauskopf, with Ankika Biswas and Amruta Khandekar in Bangalore, French version Tangi Salaün)
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