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Investing.com – The Dow moved off lows but remained pressured Thursday, led lower by tech stocks on rising U.S. rates after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell offered no clues on tweaking monthly bond purchases and shrugged off investor fears about rising inflation.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.07%, or 335 points, the S&P 500 fell 1.24%, the and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.8%.
Powell said the central bank would continue the current pace of bond buying despite the sharp jump in U.S. rates as inflation was unlikely to spiral out of control. The U.S. United States 10-Year Treasury jumped above 1.5%, while the United States 30-Year rose to a more than one-year high.
Powell said the pace of the increase in rates last week “was something that was notable and caught my attention,” but reiterated that asset purchases will continue “at least at the current level” until substantial further progress was made toward the central bank’s goals. “That’s actual progress, not forecast progress,” he added.
Beyond tech, energy bucked the trend, rising 1%, on a sharp jump in oil prices after OPEC and its allies agreed to keep production steady through April. Saudi Arabia, which was pushing against calls to increase global supply, said it would extend its one million barrels per day voluntary production cut into April to allow Russia and Kazakhstan to increase production.
In other news, used car retailer Vroom (NASDAQ:VRM) slumped 31% to a 52-week low after reported a wider-than-expected Q4 loss.
