Wall St. falls as rate-hike jitters weigh, supply chain woes overshadow retailers



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Wall St. falls as rate-hike jitters weigh, supply chain woes overshadow retailers

On Wednesday, all three key indices of Wall St. had winded down the day in a negative territory, as investors’ bet on an earlier-than-anticipated rate-hike had ramped up further following a 31-year peak US CPI (Consumer Prices Index) data, while a persistently pessimistic outlook in global supply chains had pushed retail stocks lower.

Although, Target Corp had posted a relatively upbeat quarterly earnings’ report and raised its holiday sales outlook, shares’ prices of the American retail industry tycoon fell just a notch shy of 5.0 per cent amid frets that a lingering supply chain constrain might take a teetering toll on its holiday profit margin.

Apart from that, other blue-whale retailers such as Macy’s Inc alongside Kohls Corp had shrugged off more than 5.0 per cent in the day’s pre-market trading, however, Lowe’s Cos Inc rose 1.6 per cent amid a growing demand of home improvement items.

Aside from a doughy dwindling in retail stocks, a 6.3 per cent plunge in the shares’ prices of Visa Inc had weighed heavily on Dow, as Amazon.com Inc had told in a statement that it would stop accepting payments from cards issued in the United Kingdom due to a higher transaction fee.

Nonetheless, losses in technology sector were largely pared by mega-cap tech stocks, which usually climb in times of sheer market volatility.

Wall St. plunges as rate-hike uncertainty mounts

Citing statistics, in the day’s Wall St.

wind-down, trade-sensitive Dow wobbled 0.40 per cent to 35,996.04 and benchmark S&P 500 shed 0.15 per cent to 4,693.70, while tech-heavy Nasdaq was nudged 0.33 per cent lower to 15,921.57. Meanwhile, citing a growing uncertainty on US Fed’s monetary policy stance, a co-manager of trading at Themis in Chatham, New Jersey, Joe Saluzzi said, “The inflation fear is still there and those keep creeping in and discussion that we're having of - is it transitory, is it supply driven - that's still in the market.

The Fed will hold as long as they can ... But if (inflation) continues to go higher, and you continue to see inflationary pressure, then it becomes a question of how many and how often will (rates) rise”.