Wall St stampeded as tight labour market, dismal housing data add to recession worry

• Financial

On Thursday, all three key indices of Wall St. had rounded off the session in a negative territory as Dow dwindled 0.36 per cent, Wall Street benchmark S&P 500 shrugged off 0.35 per cent and tech-heavy Nasdaq was nudged as much as 0.55 lower.

In the matter of the fact, in the day’s decline in Wall Street came against the backdrop of a number of dismal data that fuelled up recession worries, while a drag in US housing market appeared to have added to analysts’ headache that the US economy might just have entered into a recession.

Earlier in the day, data from the US Labour Department had unenveloped that the jobless claims fell lower than anticipated, eventually obliviating hopes that the US Fed would deter itself from its aggressive monetary policy on January 31-February 1 policy meet, adding further holocaust to growth stocks.

Aside from that, a separate Commerce Department report had unenveloped that US single-family building permits had fallen to a nearly 2-1/2-year low, while overall US housing starts had dipped by a 1.3 per cent last month, stoking frets that the vast US homebuilding might just have entered into a recession.

Wall St. pummels as dismal data spur up fret of a recession

Citing statistics, in the day’s Wall St. wind-down, trade-sensitive Dow dwindled as much as 0.36 per cent to 33,177.36 and Wall St. bellwether S&P 500 shed 0.35 per cent to 3,914.13, while tech-heavy Nasdaq was nudged as much as 0.55 per cent lower to 10,896.53.

Meanwhile, addressing to a growing uncertainty over the US economy, President of Chase Investment Counsel in Charlottesville, Virginia, Peter Tuz said, “You’ve got two diametrically opposed pieces of data – one is weakening in spending data and stuff like that and on the other hand still fairly robust employment data.

It’s kind of like a see-saw, you don’t know what the Fed is going to do in terms of raising rates again, by how much, holding them steady, so are they going to overdo it?”