Wall St. ends lower as US PPI hits 11-year peak, Apple sinks on app store ruling

• Financial

On Friday, all three key indices of Wall St. had rounded off the session sharply lower following a US Commerce Department data saying US Producers Prices Index had spiked to an 11-year peak last month, cementing the likelihoods of a longer period of a higher inflation despite US Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s solacing remarks while scaling the prospects higher of a near term tapering off Fed’s fiscal stimulus for the economy.

Nonetheless, earlier in the day’s US trading hour, a slew of US stock indices had opened up the day in a buoyantir texture following media headlines that the US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping had been engaged in a telephone conversation which the US capital market had branded as a positive response that could ease off trade tensions between the world’s first- and second-largest economy, however, a mid-afternoon sell-off wave following release of US PPI data for August had poured fresh scorns on investors’ optimism.

US Commerce Department said in a statement on Friday that its index for US producers prices had jumped to an annualized rate of 11-year peak in August, pointing that a higher inflation would likely to persist as a sharp rise in delta cases had been pressing supply chains across the globe.

Besides, investors’ sentiment had been hit with a hefty whiplash following comments from Cleveland Fed’s Mester, who had been quoted saying earlier in the day that she would like the US Fed to begin an ease of monetary support despite August nonfarm payrolls miss.

Besides a 3.31 per cent decline in Apple Inc shares had dragged tech stocks down following a US Federal Judge verdict that enabled app developers to direct customers to outside payment systems rather than Apple's own in-app store purchases.

Wall St. ends sharply lower

Citing statistics, in the day’s Wall St. closing bell, trade-sensitive Dow dwindled 0.78 per cent to 34,607.72 and benchmark S&P 500 shed 0.77 per cent to 4,458, while tech-heavy Nasdaq slipped 0.87 per cent to 15,115.49.

On the week, Nasdaq lost 1.29 per cent and Dow dropped 2.24 per cent, while S&P 500 shed 1.63 per cent. Meanwhile, citing that the US capital markets have been taking their feet off the gas pedals lately amid lack of fresh impetus following a long-run of record-setting rallies, AXS Investments Chief Executive Greg Bassuk said, “Investors are looking for some outsized news or information that is beyond the band of expectations, something much more outsized, positively or negatively, that will give investors better visibility into how things are going to look for the balance of the year”.