Stocks traded lower Thursday morning as a sell-off on Wall Street that pushed the S&P 500 to the lowest in more than a year and to the cusp of a bear market continued.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 259 points, or 0.82% following five straight days of losses, while the S&P 500 declined 1.05% after the benchmark closed at its lowest level since March 2021 in the prior session. The Nasdaq Composite declined 1.65% as tech shares continued to be at the epicenter of the selling during this risk-off period.
The latest inflation data on Wednesday showed consumer prices in April jumped 8.3%, higher than expected and still running close to a 40-year high of 8.5%. The report caused investors to continue to sell risky assets like tech stocks and bitcoin.
“Stocks are for sale in all corners of the globe, and the market tone is increasingly dour,” said Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge in a note.
Fresh data on the producer price index on Thursday, which measures prices at the wholesale level, did little to shake fears of rising inflation.
In regular trading Wednesday, the Dow fell 326 points, or 1.02%. The S&P 500 slipped 1.65% and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 3.18%. The S&P 500 is now more than 18% off its high and down more than 17% since the start of the year. The Nasdaq Composite is already nearly 30% off its high.