Wall St ebbs off as investors dump growth stocks; Nasdaq tumbles nearly 2.5%

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On Thursday, all three major indices of Wall St. had closed out the session lower with Nasdaq nosediving as much as 2.5 per cent as the US Fed’s Wednesday announcement of a faster bond tapering program had prompted a havoc-scale gyration towards value stocks from growth, while prospects of at least three rate-hikes in 2022 had pushed more economically sensitive sectors higher.

On top of that, as market participants had jumped on the bandwagon of a mass-scale sell-off of growth stocks, shares’ prices of mega-cap tech conglomerates such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia alongside Tesla among others, took a tattering header while hitting the Wall Street benchmark S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq.

Nonetheless, US Labor Department’s initial jobless claims report that showed earlier in the day that the number of Americans filing for first-time state unemployment benefits rose marginally last week, signaling a healthful labor market landscape, had helped trade-sensitive Dow pare some of its losses.

Wall Street falls as growth stocks totter

Citing statistics, in the day’s Wall St. closing bell, trade-sensitive Dow edged 0.09 per cent lower to 35,893.36 and benchmark S&P 500 shed 0.88 per cent to 4,668.45, while tech-heavy Nasdaq dived as much as 2.47 per cent, rounding off the session at 15,180.42.

Meanwhile, citing that growth stocks would more likely to meet with further casualties as the US Fed had pledged to three rate-hikes each in 2022 and in 2023, an analyst at Bright Trading LLC, Dennis Dick said, “You're seeing money come out of growth, as it should.

If we are going into an environment where interest rates are going up, growth stocks are going to be less attractive. There's a lot of uncertainty as we go into 2022... We're going to have a more hawkish Fed that is going to pull away the punch bowl”.