2023-06-16 23:47:00
By Noel Randewich and Sruthi Shankar
(Reuters) – The S&P 500 ended lower on Friday, weighed down by Microsoft and other big names in the market, after comments from two Federal Reserve officials dampened optimism that the U.S. central bank is close to end of its interest rate hikes.
The Nasdaq technology index also ended the week lower, although it and the S&P 500 remained close to 14-month highs after economic data this week pointed to cooling US inflation, which overshadowed worries about further increases. in interest.
After keeping interest rates unchanged on Wednesday, the central bank signaled that borrowing costs could rise by as much as 0.5 percentage point by the end of the year. However, traders see a pause in the Fed’s hikes or even a rate cut in December, after an expected 0.25 percentage point hike in the base rate in July, according to CMEGroup’s Fedwatch tool.
Fed policymakers on Friday tried to dampen that optimism. Fed Governor Christopher Waller warned that “core inflation is not falling as I thought”. Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin said he was “comfortable” with further rate hikes as inflation was not yet returning to 2%.
A 1.7% drop in Microsoft and a 1.3% drop in Amazon.com weighed on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. Microsoft stock ended Thursday at an all-time high.
The S&P 500 fell 0.36% to 4,409.77 points. The Nasdaq fell 0.68% to 13,689.57 points. The Dow Jones fell 0.31% to 34,301.03 points.
Of the 11 S&P 500 sector indices, eight fell, with communications services down 1% at the bottom, followed by a 0.83% loss in information technology.
For the week, the S&P 500 was up 2.6%, the Dow Jones was up 1.2% and the Nasdaq gained 3.2%.
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