The stock market’s slide continued on Thursday as Wall Street reacted to the latest retailer earnings and braced for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s Friday morning speech at the Jackson Hole summit.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 300 points, or 0.7%. The S&P 500 was down 0.4%. The Nasdaq Composite was down 0.4%.
Technology stocks continued to struggle amid this week’s rotation away from the year’s top performers that has benefitted dividend stocks and stocks with relatively low volatility, but today, most of the market was down.
“Higher-than-expected jobless claims may be less of a story for markets than renewed concerns about tariffs driving prices higher,” writes Chris Larkin, managing director, trading and investing at E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley. “If the Fed appears to be favoring the inflation side of its mandate, confidence in a September rate cut could take a hit. Markets will be looking to Chairman Powell’s speech tomorrow at Jackson Hole to clarify the Fed’s stance.”
Walmart, with the big earnings report of the week, was down after its results disappointed analysts.
The S&P 500 is riding its longest losing streak since the four days that ended on Aug. 1; if it falls today, it would mark its first five-day losing streak since the five days that ended on Jan. 2. Frank Cappelleri, founder of technical analysis firm CappThesis, says it’s not all been bad, as the index on Wednesday finished well off its lows and breadth was positive.
“So far, these are only minor positives, but with the index still hovering near the highs and yet to completely break momentum — at least outside of the growth areas — the overall structure remains intact,” Cappelleri writes.
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