Wall Street in the red. Apple falls 4% and weighs on the Nasdaq Composite – Stock Exchange

The main indices on Wall Street ended with a slight drop this Thursday, penalized by strong falls in large technology companies, which have great weight in terms of market capitalization.

Today’s correction comes after the main benchmarks recorded robust gains on Wednesday, on the back of results of North American banks better than expected ea US underlying inflation to slow, above estimates.

The industrial Dow Jones fell 0.16% to 43,153.13 points, while the S&P 500 fell 0.21% to 5,937.34 points. The technological Nasdaq Composite fell 0.89% to 19,338.29 points. Both indexes had their best day in more than two months yesterday, while the S&P 500 recorded its best session since November.

The penalty was Apple, which lost 4.04% and had its worst day since August, while Tesla fell 3.36%, Nvidia 1.92% and Alphabet – owner of Google – fell 1.3%.

Focusing attention were results from other large banks. After positive results from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Citigroup, the Bank of America and the Morgan Stanley revealed that profits more than doubled in the final quarter of last year. Even so, BofA lost 0.98%, while Morgan Stanley rose 4.03%.

The earnings season for the final quarter of last year began on a positive note with 77% of companies reporting results exceeding expectations, according to FactSet.

Also highlighted were statements by Federal Reserve Governor Cristopher Waller, who stated that it is a possibility that the Fed will reduce interest rates in the first half of the year, if inflation continues to slow down. Waller also mentioned, in an interview with CNBC, that he does not rule out a drop in interest rates in March.

Investors also paid attention to the departure of Scott Bessent, the choice of President-elect of the United States to Secretary of the Treasury, to the Senate Finance Committee. Bessent argued that the dollar stands to remain the world’s reserve currency, that the Federal Reserve must remain independent and that it is available to impose tougher sanctions on the Russian oil sector. The next Treasury secretary also defended the extension of a tax cut implemented by Trump in 2017 that ends at the end of this year.

If it is not renewed, Bessent states that there would be a tax increase of around four billion dollars that would “crush” the middle class and the North American economy.