NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street’s weak end to last year looks set to carry over into 2025, and U.S. stock indexes slipped Thursday.

The S&P 500 was down 0.5% in Thursday afternoon trading and was on track to expand. Four-day losing streak Which dimmed his intimacy. Stellar 2024. The main gauge of Wall Street’s health has lost 0.9% since early morning and is headed for its longest loss since April.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 223 points, or 0.5 percent, by 2:30 p.m. ET, after an early gain of 360 points disappeared. The Nasdaq Composite was down 0.6 percent.

Tesla helped bring down the market after the disclosure. Fewer vehicles provided. More than analysts expected in the last three months of 2024. The electric vehicle company’s stock fell 6.7 percent.

Tesla was one of the big winners of 2024, especially after Donald Trump’s Election Day victory fueled speculation that Elon Musk’s close ties to the president-elect could help the company. But critics are warning that stock market prices have gone too high, too fast, and risk a reversal.

Consider a measure of how heavily Wall Street analysts are recommending stocks, tracked by Bank of America, which recently hit its highest level since early 2022, according to strategist Swetha Subramanian. She says the move has been a reliable contrarian signal in the past, and it’s a little shy of triggering a signal for those to sell when most of Wall Street herds in the same direction.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, HB Filler sank 7.4 percent after the seller of adhesives, sealants and other specialty chemical products said it had recently seen sales slow in several of its consumer categories.

Wall Street’s winning companies were linked to the energy industry after crude oil and natural gas prices rose.

Constellation Energy added 6.2 percent to the S&P 500 after announcing it won more than $1 billion in joint contracts with the U.S. General Services Administration to deliver electricity and carry out energy efficiency and conservation initiatives.

Some big tech stocks also helped limit the market’s losses. Nvidia, whose chips are powering the world’s move into artificial intelligence technology, rose 2.1 percent, a better jump than 170 percent last year, following its nearly 240 percent rise in 2023.

Some investors and analysts are counting on the AI ​​rush to continue, though critics say it has made stock prices too expensive. As the calendar flips to the new year, for example, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives says it’s “the same tech playbook in year 3 of this tech AI-driven bull market.”

It looks like some pages in the playbook are changing. For example, investors have beaten expectations about how much the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in 2025.

The economy has held up remarkably well in recent years despite higher rates brought in by the Fed to curb inflation. But inflation has recently appeared more resistant to cutting the last leg of the Fed’s 2% target, and Trump’s emphasis on tariffs and other policies could put more upward pressure on prices. Concerns have increased.

That led the Fed to say recently that it would likely deliver fewer economy-juicing interest rate cuts in 2025 than it had previously thought.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury stood at 4.57 percent late Tuesday, after a report Fewer American workers applied for unemployment benefits. More than economists expected last week. It’s the latest sign that the job market is solid.

In overseas stock markets, indices in Hong Kong fell 2.2% and in Shanghai 2.7% after a survey of factory managers suggested Chinese activity expanded at a slower pace in December. New orders, employment and business sentiment weakened.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s rousing speech in his New Year’s address did little to inspire optimism among investors hoping for more aggressive action to prop up the world’s second-largest economy and boost stock prices. are doing

“We have fully adopted policies to achieve concrete gains in achieving high-quality development. China’s economy has recovered and is on the upswing,” Xi said in his New Year message, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. is moving towards

Stock indices were mostly higher in Europe, while Japanese markets were closed.

___

AP Business Writer Yuri Kageyama contributed.





Source link