Wall Street falls with surprising rise in unemployment claims, tech crash

By Devik Jain and Shreyashi Sanyal

(Reuters) – The main Wall Street indices fell on Thursday as investors resumed the move to major technology-related companies, while an unexpected rise in weekly unemployment insurance claims pointed to a fragile recovery in the housing market. job.

The Labor Department report showed that the state’s initial claims for unemployment benefits were 861,000 last week, compared to 848,000 the previous week, partly due to potential claims related to the temporary closure of auto factories due to global shortages of semiconductor chips.

“The only part of the economy that has remained disappointing is clearly the job picture,” said Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at LPL Financial (NASDAQ 🙂 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

US stock indexes hit record highs earlier in the week, but gradually declined after an increase in yields on treasury bills, leading to fears of higher inflation.

These concerns led investors to post profit on highly valued shares in the technology and communications services sectors, which have sustained a 76% increase in the benchmark since its low points in March 2020.

Apple Inc shares (NASDAQ :), Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ :), Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ :), Tesla (NASDAQ 🙂 Inc and Alphabet (NASDAQ 🙂 Inc fell between 0.8% and 2.0%.

“A slow, steady increase may not necessarily stop the upward trend in stocks, but it will likely force the rotation of high-priced stocks, typically in the technology sector, to more reasonably priced cyclical stocks,” said Hussein Sayed, chief strategist FXTM market share.

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ 🙂 shares fell 1.3% while Wall Street assessed the broader ramifications of its move to block all news content in Australia.

Only the defensive utilities sector was in positive territory at the beginning of trading, out of the 11 main sectors of the S&P 500.

Walmart (NYSE 🙂 Inc fell 5.9% after the world’s largest retailer lost quarterly profit estimates and predicted that fiscal 2022 net sales would increase by just one digit.

At 9:41 am ET, the fell 267.75 points, or 0.85%, at 31,345.27, the S&P 500 fell 32.45 points, or 0.83%, at 3,898.88 and fell 153.32 points, or 1.10%, in 13,812.17.

Marriott International (NASDAQ 🙂 Inc fell 1.9% after reporting a quarterly loss, as bookings from the world’s largest hotel chain declined due to pandemic-induced travel restrictions.

Declining emissions outperformed the advanced ones by a 2.59 to 1 ratio on the NYSE and a 2.86 to 1 ratio on the Nasdaq. The S&P index recorded six new 52-week highs and no new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 37 new highs and three new lows.