The stock exchanges in New York opened lower on Wednesday. Investors on Wall Street are looking at inflation data from the United States that turned out much higher than expected.
In recent days, fears of sharply rising inflation and rising interest rates have also caused price falls on the stock exchanges, especially for tech funds.
US inflation was 0.8 percent monthly in April. That is the most substantial increase since 2009 and was expected to be 0.2 percent. If inflation rises rapidly, the Federal Reserve, the American umbrella of central banks, may increase interest rates more quickly. This is particularly unfavourable for technology companies that have recently lost value. Apple, Google parent Alphabet, Microsoft, Tesla and Facebook were up to 1.5 percent in the red.
Banks, on the other hand, benefit from a higher interest rate. That created pluses for large American banks such as Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs up to 2.4 percent.
Shortly after opening, the leading Dow Jones index recorded a loss of 0.3 percent at 34,177 points. The broad S&P 500 lost 0.5 percent to 4129 points, and the technology gauge Nasdaq dropped 1.2 percent to 13,186 points.
Amazon showed a minus of 0.8 percent. In 2017, the European Commission wrongly instructed the Luxembourg government to claim 250 million euros in “arrears” tax plus interest from the online store. This was ruled by the General Court of the European Union in a case brought by the Luxembourg government and Amazon against the decision of the day-to-day EU administration.
The maker of computer games Electronic Arts (EA), known for the FIFA football games, came up with numbers and prospects reasonably good with investors. The share rose 0.4 percent. Television streaming service FuboTV won more than 14 percent after an increase in revenue expectations.