US stocks close mainly lower on weak data

The S&P 500 dipped and the Nasdaq ended sharply lower on Wednesday after a growing wave of weak economic data deepened worries that the Federal Reserve’s rapid interest rate hikes might tip the US economy into a recession.

Nvidia dropped 2.1 percent and was among the stocks weighing most on the S&P 500 after Alphabet’s Google unit said the supercomputers it uses to train its artificial intelligence models were faster and more power-efficient than comparable components made by the chipmaker.

Tesla fell 3.7 percent, while Amazon and Apple declined more than 1 percent, pulling down the Nasdaq and reversing gains in some of Wall Street’s most valuable companies in recent weeks.

Caterpillar, viewed as a bellwether for the industrial sector, dropped 1.8 percent, bringing its loss over the past two days to 7 percent as investors fretted about a potential economic downturn.

The S&P 500 declined 0.25 percent to end the session at 4,090 points.

The Nasdaq fell 1.07 percent to 11,997 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.24 percent to 33,483 points.

Driving the recession fears, the ADP National Employment report showed US private employers hired far fewer workers than expected in March. That followed Tuesday’s weak job openings data.

As well, the Institute for Supply Management’s survey showed the services sector slowed more than expected last month on cooling demand, while a measure of prices paid by services businesses fell to a near three-year low.

Earlier this week data showed falling factory orders and soft manufacturing activity.

Wall Street’s recent losses in reaction to signs of a slowing economy mark a change from recent months, when investors cheered weak economic data on the basis that it might mean the Fed’s interest rate hikes were working and that the Fed could ease up on its campaign to rein in decades-high inflation.

“We may have transitioned from the notion that ‘bad news is good news’ to ‘bad new is bad news’,” said Jay Hatfield, chief executive and portfolio manager at InfraCap in New York. “Fear about a recession is the dominant theme.”