Wall St. plummets after ‘hawkish’ FOMC minutes

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On Wednesday, a slew of stock indices in the Wall St. had fallen across the board with growth stocks leading the tally of declines, while Dow turned negative following December 14-15 FOMC Minutes released late on the day after chartering at records earlier in the session, as Dec 14-15 Fed Minutes had flagged a faster rate-hike approach.

Apart from a faster rate-hike approach, minutes from December 14-15 US Fed policy meet also had unveiled that the Fed policymakers had agreed to an acceleration in US Central Bank’s bond tapering program in a bid to ease a robust build-up in price pressures, while the policymakers were reportedly arguing on whether they should allow the US Central Bank to telescope its holdings in order to tame a blazing inflation-surge, eventually weighing on all three key indices of Wall Street which usually witness rate-hike bets as a negative impetus.

In point of fact, in the day’s steep decline in Wall Street was entirely catalysed by a late-afternoon twist in the tail, unleashed by the Dec 14-15 Fed Minutes released on GMT. 19.00, while tech stocks were torn apart amid an intransigent rate-hike bet and rate-sensitive real estate sector tumbled as much as 2.6 per cent.

Wall St. falters after ultra-hawkish shift in FOMC Minutes

Citing statistics, in the day’s Wall St. wind-down, trade-sensitive Dow dropped 1.07 per cent to 36,407.11 and Wall Street bellwether S&P 500 lost 1.94 per cent to 4,700.58, while tech-heavy Nasdaq took a tattering header of 3.314 per cent to wrap up the session at 15,100.17, marking off the biggest intra-session loss since February last year.

Meanwhile, addressing to a more hawkish than anticipated tone from the US Federal Reserve, a chief investment officer at Lenox Wealth Advisors in New York, David Carter said, “This is more hawkish than expected. This shift towards hawkishness could be problematic for both stock and bond markets. ”