Wall Street slips with surprise rise in jobless claims, technology chip by Reuters

By Devik Jain and Shreyashi Sanyal

(Reuters) – Wall Street’s key indices fell on Thursday as investors resumed a shift from the big tech-related businesses, while an unexpected rise in weekly unemployment claims indicates a fragile recovery in the labor market.

The Department of Labor’s report showed that initial claims for state unemployment last week were 861,000, compared to 848,000 in the previous week, partly due to potential claims related to the temporary closure of car plants due to a global shortage of semiconductor chips.

“The one part of the economy that has remained disappointing is clearly the employment picture,” said Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at LPL Financial (NASDAQ 🙂 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

US stock indices reached a record high at the beginning of the week, but gradually retreated to a rise in Treasury bond yields, leading to fears of higher inflation.

These concerns have forced investors to profit from high-valuation equities in the technology and communications services sector, which have supported a 76% rise in the benchmark index since its March 2020 low.

Shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ :), Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ :), Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ :), Tesla (NASDAQ 🙂 Inc and Alphabet (NASDAQ 🙂 Inc fell between 0.8% and 2.0%.

“A slow-moving stock may not necessarily disrupt the rising stock price, but is likely to force high-price stocks, typically in the technology sector, to buy cheaper cyclical stocks,” said Hussein Sayed, FXTM’s chief market strategist. said.

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ :)’s shares declined 1.3% as Wall Street rated the bigger impact of its move to block all news content in Australia.

Only the defensive utilities sector was in the positive area in the early trading session, out of the 11 major S&P 500 sectors.

Walmart (NYSE 🙂 Inc slipped 5.9% after the world’s largest retailer missed quarterly profit estimates and predicted that fiscal net sales would rise by low single digits in 2022.

At 9:41 AM ET it was 267.75 points, or 0.85%, at 31.345.27, the S&P 500 fell 32.45 points, or 0.83%, at 3,888.88 and 153.32 points, or 1.10%, at 13,812.17.

Marriott International (NASDAQ 🙂 Inc declined 1.9% after reporting a quarterly loss as the world’s largest hotel chain’s bookings declined due to travel restrictions caused by pandemics.

Declining issues were more than predecessors with a 2.59-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and a 2.86-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq. The S&P index recorded six new 52-week highs and no new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 37 new highs and three new lows.