NEW YORK — With inflation going only higher, stocks are slipping on Wall Street Thursday as expectations build that the Federal Reserve will have to get more aggressive about removing the tremendous support it’s given the economy.
The hottest inflation reading since 1982 sent the S&P 500 down 0.5% in early trading. It also sent Treasury yields jumping, as traders built up bets the Fed may have to throttle the economy with a bigger-than-usual hike in interest rates next month. The yield on the 10-year Treasury topped 2% for the first time since August 2019.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 93 points, or 0.3%, at 35,674, as of 9:52 a.m. Eastern time. The Nasdaq composite was 0.8% lower, with tech stocks again taking some of the market’s heaviest losses. They tend to get hit harder by expectations for rising rates in part because their prices look more expensive.
Inflation has been building over the last year as the economy roared back from the pandemic. Supply shortages and snags in global supply chains also pushed inflation higher, and prices at the consumer level were up 7.5% last month from a year earlier. That was even hotter than economists expected.
