Major stock indexes turned lower on Wall Street on Friday to bring a choppy week to a close.
- The S&P 500 fell 54 points, or 1.2%, to 4,450.
- The Dow fell 288 points, or 0.8%, to 34,618.
- The Nasdaq fell 217 points, or 1.5%, to 13,708.
Technology stocks were the biggest drag on the market. Microsoft fell 2.4%, and chipmaker Nvidia fell 3.7%. US automaker stocks were proving to be resilient after members of the United Auto Workers union walked off the job at several plants overnight. Ford edged up 0.1%, and General Motors rose 1.1%. Shares in Stellantis gained 1.9% in trading on the Milan Stock Exchange in Italy. Investors spent much of the week reviewing mostly healthy updates on the US economy. The reports came ahead of next week's Federal Reserve meeting, where the central bank is expected to continue holding interest rates steady.
"Things were fairly in line from a data perspective," said Matthew Stucky, senior portfolio manager at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management. "Really, the market is laser-focused on what's going to impact Federal Reserve activity." The central bank raised rates aggressively through 2022 and 2023 in an effort to tame inflation, but it maintained interest rate levels at its last meeting. Inflation has generally been easing back to the central bank's target of 2%.
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