Stocks suffered their steepest drop in eight months on Wednesday, as rising interest rates gnawed at investors and as previously high-flying technology shares tumbled in the face of growing tensions with China.
The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 3.3 percent, registering its fifth consecutive daily decline. That’s the longest string of down days for the S.&P. 500, the market’s benchmark, since November 2016. The damage continued on Thursday in Asia, as markets in China, Japan and Hong Kong fell about 3 percent in morning trading.
The decline signaled a change in mood on Wall Street. For months, it had seemed as though nothing could spook stock investors in the United States. Growing corporate profits and surging shares of technology giants pushed major benchmarks to a string of record highs.
But concerns about nascent inflation, rising interest rates and the potential for the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy came together into a wave of selling Wednesday. In addition, President Trump’s policies toward Beijing have become a drag on technology companies, which rely heavily on China as a manufacturing base. Shares of the companies that make components like semiconductors have been particularly hard hit in the recent selling. Apple shares, for example, slid over 4.5 percent on Wednesday.
“It looks as though Trump is settling most of the trade skirmishes around the world that he started earlier this year with one important exception,” said Ed Yardeni, president of the stock market research firm Yardeni Research. “It looks like China is going to be a long-term issue.”
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