1 week Ago
NEW YORK — U.S. stocks tumbled Nov.
15 as the Wall Street's "Trump bump" from last week's presidential election, along with a cut to interest rates by the Federal Reserve, kept fading. The S&P 500 dropped 1.3 percent Friday for its worst trading session since before Election Day to close out a losing week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.7 percent, and the Nasdaq composite sank 2.2 percent.
Drugmakers helped drag the market down after President-elect Donald Trump said he wants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine activist, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Moderna tumbled 7.3 percent, and Pfizer fell 4.7 percent over concerns about a possible hit to their profits.
Kennedy still needs confirmation from the Senate to get the job, and some analysts are skeptical about his chances. "However, if Kennedy is confirmed, it is hard to bookend risks for investors as his views are so outside the traditional Republican health policy orthodoxy," Raymond James analyst Chris Meekins, a former deputy assistant secretary at the department known as HHS, wrote in a research note. "Investors may need to forget everything they thought they knew about Republicans and health care," Meekins added.
"Kennedy's appointment may make it less likely traditional qualified experienced (Republican) staff will agree to join HHS, creating more uncertainty." Biotech stocks broadly sank to some of the market's worst losses, but the sharpest drop in the S&P 500 came from Applied Materials. Its shares tumbled 9.
2 percent even though the company reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The provider of manufacturing equipment and services to the semiconductor industry gave a projected range for upcoming revenue whose midpoint was short of expectations. The pressure is on companies to deliver big growth, in part because their stock prices have been rising so much faster than their earnings.
That's made the broad stock market look more expensive by a range of measures, which has critics calling for at least a fade. The S&P 500 is still up 23 percent for the year and not far from its all-time high set Monday, despite this past week's weakness. Stocks had been broadly roaring since Election Day, when Trump's victory sent a jolt through financial markets worldwide.
Investors immediately began sending up stocks of banks, smaller U.S. companies and cryptocurrencies as they laid bets on the winners coming out of the incoming president's preference for higher tariffs, lower tax rates and lighter regulation.
But investors are also taking into account some of the potential downsides from Trump's return to the White House. Besides Friday's hit to vaccine makers, Treasury yields have been climbing on both the economy's surprising resilience and worries that Trump's policies could spur bigger U.S.
government deficits and faster inflation. That's forced traders to recalibrate how much relief the Federal Reserve could provide for the economy next year through cuts to interest rates. The central bank earlier this month lowered its main interest rate for the second time this year, and past forecasts indicated Fed officials saw more cuts as likely through 2025.
Lower interest rates can act as fuel for the economy and stock market, but they can also put upward pressure on inflation. On Thursday, Fed chief Jerome Powell suggested the central bank may be cautious about future decisions on interest rates. "The economy is not sending any signals that we need to be in a hurry to lower rates," he said, though he declined to discuss the impact of Trump's potential policies.
Traders have since ratcheted back forecasts for whether the Fed will cut rates again at its December meeting, though they still see better than a coin flip's chance of it, according to data from CME Group. On Friday, Treasury yields edged down in the bond market after swinging following several reports on the economy. One showed shoppers spent more at U.
S. retailers last month than expected, another signal that the most influential force on the economy remains solid. "Many consumers were reporting that they were putting off trips and big ticket item purchases until after the election," according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management.
"Many businesses reported they were putting off capital investment due to the election. Now that the uncertainty of the outcome is behind us, we could see some decent 'relief spending.'" Friday's data on retail activity, though, may not be quite as strong as it appeared.
After stripping out automobile purchases, sales at retailers were weaker last month than economists expected. The 10-year Treasury's yield held at 4.44 percent, where it was late Thursday, after swinging up and down.
The two-year yield, which more closely tracks expectations for Fed action, fell to 4.31 percent from 4.36 percent late Thursday.
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