Wall St posts decline over first week of '22 as Nasdaq logs worst week since Feb.

• Home
• stock markets

On Friday, a swathe of key indices of Wall St. had winded down the first week of the New Year with hefty losses, while all three major indices of Wall Street also had ended up the session in a negative territory, mostly spiralled downwards by concerns over a looming interest rate hike alongside a record surge in Omicron cases.

Nonetheless, in the day’s losses in the Wall Street were almost entirely catalysed by US nonfarm payrolls miss in December, while the weekly decline was largely galvanized by a Wednesday FOMC Minutes release that had underscored a growing possibility of an earlier than anticipated rate hike alongside a contraction of US Central Bank’s holdings in Treasuries and mortgage-backed assets in a bid to tame a tormenting inflation-surge, as a sharp tottering in growth stocks had prompted Nasdaq to stomach its largest weekly percentage decline since the February of 2021.

On Wednesday, minutes from US Fed’s Dec 14-15 policy meet had unveiled that the policymakers had been looking to an earlier-than-anticipated rate-hike, which eventually had sent a shockwave across global equity markets.

However, earlier on Friday, US Labor Department’s nonfarm payrolls had revealed that the US economy had created 199,000 jobs in December, less than a half of an analysts’ estimate of 400,000 positions, though, the report held a silver lining for a roaring US economy since it had signalled that US labor market might have reached a maximum employment with unemployment rate pummelling to a 22-month low of 3.9 per cent.

Besides, a steep decline in nonfarm payrolls in January helped allay investors’ concern over a rate hike as early as by January, paring some losses late in the session.

Wall St. ends lower after December nonfarm payroll miss

Citing statistics, in the day’s Wall St.

wind down, trade sensitive Dow edged 0.01 per cent lower to 36,231.66 and benchmark S&P 500 shed 0.41 per cent to 4,677.03, while tech-heavy Nasdaq was jolted as much as 0.96 per cent lower to 14,935.90. On the week, Dow dwindled 0.3 per cent and S&P 500 lost 1.9 per cent, while Nasdaq took a teetering header of 4.5 per cent.