Wall Street came under pressure on Thursday, enduring its worst day in a month as a sell-off of technology stocks intensified.
After an extraordinary rally around hopes for artificial intelligence that propelled global stock markets to record highs, fears that tech firms are now overvalued loom large.
Investors are also braced for the release of a batch of official data on the state of the US economy, amid heightened uncertainty over its strength during the federal government shutdown.
The benchmark S&P 500 and the Dow Jones industrial average each closed down 1.7% in New York on Thursday, while the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.3%.
Nvidia, the $4.5tn tech company, led tech stocks lower. It declined 3.6% as it continues to grapple with the fallout from the disclosure by Japanese investor SoftBank that it had sold its entire stake in the firm for $5.8bn.
“There’s a lot of uncertainties about the state of the economy,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities in New York. “What we’re going through is a little bit of a correction in the market in the AI sector and we’re seeing market rotation.”
With the longest US government shutdown in history now over after more than 42 days, federal officials are preparing to publish a string of highly anticipated economic data reports, including on jobs and inflation.
Remarks by senior Federal Reserve officials meanwhile tested market confidence that the central bank is preparing to again cut interest rates at its upcoming meeting next month. “We need to proceed and tread with caution,” said Alberto Musalem, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis.
Kevin Hassett, director of Donald Trump’s national economic council, said on Thursday that the jobs report for October would show how many jobs had been added or lost in the labor force that month, but not include the headline unemployment rate.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics stressed that it hoped to publish data on employment “as soon as possible”, but cautioned that it “may take time to fully assess the situation” before finalizing revised release dates.
