By Stephen Culp
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street ended the session in the middle lower on Wednesday, as market participants expected inflation data to find out when the US Federal Reserve could tighten its losing monetary policy.
The retail obsession with “meme stocks” continued unabated.
All three major US stock indexes reversed their previous gains, but remained covered in the absence of clear market catalysts.
“There’s been a lull in the news,” said Chuck Carlson, chief executive of Horizon Investment Services in Hammond, Indiana. “We’ve been through a period of profits and people expect inflation figures tomorrow, so you have a mixed market where the core averages don’t do much of anything.”
Strongly shortened stocks of memes extended their rally, driven by social media, as Aethlon Medical jumped 388.2%.
Reddit chatter also helped boost shares of prison operator GEO Group and World Wrestling Entertainment by 38.4% and 10.9%, respectively.
Other stocks of memes such as Clover Health, AMC Entertainment and Bed Bath & Beyond closed lower.
Retail volume returned to its peak in January, according to Vanda Research, as social media forums struggled to identify the next GameStop Corp., the stocks that launched the phenomenon.
“I feel like an alternative stock market,” Carlson added. This is an indication of speculation. You can succeed if you enter at the right time, but it is very difficult to play successfully over time. “
“I don’t think you need to read too much about the wider market.”
GameStop named Matt Furlong as its new CEO ahead of its earnings report, which showed a quarterly loss of $ 1.01 per share. Its shares fell more than 4% in after-hours trading.
US President Joe Biden has changed course in the ongoing negotiations to reach a bilateral agreement on infrastructure spending after “individual” talks with Senator Shelley Capito fell apart.
Industrial stocks that could benefit from an infrastructure deal fell 1%.
Washington lawmakers have passed an extensive bill designed to strengthen the United States’ ability to compete with Chinese technology by providing funding for research and semiconductor production amid the continuing drought in chip supplies. The bill is now being referred to the House of Representatives.
However, the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index slipped 0.4%.
The Labor Ministry’s consumer price index report, released on Thursday, will give a new perspective on inflation amid a recovery in supply / demand imbalances as investors determine whether inflationary pressures, according to the Fed, will be transient.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 152.68 points, or 0.44%, to 34,447.14; The S&P 500 lost 7.71 points, or 0.18%, at 4,219.55; and the Nasdaq Composite fell 13.16 points, or 0.09%, to 13,911.75.
Among the 11 major sectors in the S&P 500, healthcare has won the most.
Treasury yields fell below 1.5% for the first time since May, affecting interest-sensitive finances.
Campbell Soup Co missed quarterly earnings expectations and cut its full-year earnings forecast by 6.5%.
Pfizer Inc gained 2.5% after the Biden administration revealed plans to donate 500 doses of COVID-19 to about 100 countries over the next two years, according to a Washington Post report.
Drugmaker Merck & Co rose 2.3 percent during its announcement that the U.S. government had agreed to buy about 1.7 million courses of the company’s molnovipiravir experimental COVID-19 treatment for about 1.2 billion dollars if the drug meets regulatory approval.
Emission reductions outperforming the advanced NYSE by a ratio of 1.12 to 1; of the Nasdaq, the ratio of 1.13 to 1 preferably refused.
The S&P 500 publishes 38 new 52-week highs and two new lows; Nasdaq Composite registered 126 new peaks and 14 new lows.
The volume of stock exchanges in the United States is 11.53 billion shares, compared to an average of 10.74 billion in the last 20 trading days.
(Report by Stephen Culp; Additional Report by Barn Warrick and Shashank Nayar in Bengaluru; Edited by Gareth Jones and Richard Chang)