Wall Street falls as Fed minutes reverse earlier rally
DJ: 20,648.15 -41.09 NAS: 5,864.48
-34.13 S&P: 2,352.95
-7.21 4/5
(Reuters) Wall Street ended lower on Wednesday after a
late-afternoon reversal following signals from the Federal Reserve that it
could change its bond investment policy this year, quenching a rally sparked by
a strong private-sector jobs report.
Also
investor concerns about the Trump administration's ability to deliver promised
tax cuts were intensified by comments from lawmakers on deep divisions in
Washington.
Most Federal Reserve policymakers think
the U.S. central bank should take steps to begin trimming its $4.5 trillion
balance sheet
this year as long as the economic data holds up, Fed meeting minutes showed.
The
minutes also showed "some participants viewed equity prices as quite high
relative to standard valuation measures."
“Either
it scared participants because of talk that sounds like maybe (the stock market) is bubbling, or
there is some thought that the normalization of the balance sheet is going to
harm growth ... or we are going to get more (rate) hikes” than already expected, said
Janna Sampson, co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments LLC in
Lisle, Illinois.
In a heavy volume trading day, The Dow
Jones Industrial Average .DJI ended down
41.09 points, or 0.2 percent, at 20,648.15, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 7.21
points, or 0.31 percent, to 2,352.95 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 34.13
points, or 0.58 percent, to 5,864.48. The
Dow posted its largest intra-day downside reversal in 14 months in Wednesday's
session after shedding a gain of more than 198 points to end near the session
low, which was a drop of nearly 50 points.
After
the recent failure of the Republicans' healthcare legislation reform bill some
investors had hoped this would bring President Donald Trump's tax-cutting
promise closer to reality.
But
U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said on Wednesday that tax reform will take longer to
accomplish than healthcare.
"It
seems like it was a combination of hawkish Fed minutes, disappointment about the pace of tax reform and a
pullback in crude prices" that reversed the rally, according to
Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab
in Austin, Texas.
"From
my perspective, this is probably an unjustified emotional dip driven by several
mixed signals."
Nine
of the S&P's 11 major sectors finished lower, with financials leading the
sell-off. Utilities .SPLRCU and Real Estate .SPLRCREC, the so-called defensive
sectors, were the only two that ended higher.
Earlier
in the day the S&P had risen as much as 0.8 percent and the Nasdaq hit a
record high after private-sector jobs data blew past expectations.
Data
showed that U.S. companies added
263,000 workers in March, the most since December 2014 and well above
economists' expectations of 187,000.
The
Nasdaq biotechnology index .NBI turned negative in the late afternoon to end
down 1.4 percent.
This
was likely because investors turned away from riskier investments this
afternoon, said Chris Zaccarelli, Chief Investment Officer at Cornerstone
Financial Partners in Huntersville, North Carolina.
Declining
issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.93-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq,
a 2.61-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The
S&P 500 posted 38 new 52-week highs and six new lows; the Nasdaq Composite
recorded 71 new highs and 69 new lows.
More
than 7.58 billion shares
changed hands on U.S. exchanges compared with the 6.8 billion average
for the last 20 sessions.
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