Update: US Equity Indexes Fall as Technology Slides, Warsh's Inflation Focus Lifts Treasury Yields
(Updates with index/price moves, macroeconomic data and geopolitical news from the first paragraph.)US equity indexes fell as technology chipped away at gains in communication services, government bond yields rose after Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh reiterated his focus on inflation, and crude oil declined.The Nasdaq Composite fell 0.7% to 26,040.03 on Wednesday. The S&P 500 shed 0.2% to 7,483.23, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was little changed at 52,305.24.Meta Platforms (META) is building a cloud infrastructure business to sell access to AI computing power and models, setting up a new area of competition with Amazon (AMZN) Web Services, Microsoft (MSFT) Azure, and Alphabet's (GOOG, GOOGL) Google Cloud, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Shares of Meta surged 8.8%, one of the S&P 500's and the Nasdaq's top gainers.Of the bottom 10 stocks with a market capitalization of more than $200 billion each, nine were technology firms, according to data compiled by Finviz. Within these, the majority were either semiconductors or semiconductor equipment and materials. The steepest decline in the group was KLA (KLAC), down nearly 12%.Fed Chair Warsh said price risks have fallen in recent weeks, while reiterating his determination to ease inflation to the US central bank's 2% target, Bloomberg reported. "Expectations of inflation over the first four weeks of this period have come down, [and] inflation risks have come down."Most US Treasury yields rose, with the 10-year surging 5.9 basis points to 4.48%. The two-year rate jumped 4.2 basis points to 4.18%.Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said meetings with Qatari and Pakistani officials in Doha, Qatar, ended without direct talks between delegations from Washington and Tehran, according to Al Jazeera, a Middle East news agency. Gharibabadi said a communication channel will be set up for discussing breaches of the memorandum of understanding with the US, Al Jazeera cited Iran's official news agency, IRNA.Meanwhile, commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz surged over the past few weeks, with American military support helping boost oil flows to more than 10 million barrels a day, a US official told Bloomberg.The front-month global benchmark North Sea Brent declined 2.4% to $71.19 per barrel, and the US West Texas Intermediate retreated 2% to $68.10 per barrel.In economic news, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said firms planned to cut 45,849 jobs in June, down from 97,006 in May and 47,999 a year ago.ADP's monthly measure of private payrolls showed a 98,000 increase in June, missing the 120,000 jump indicated in a Bloomberg-compiled survey.The Institute for Supply Management's US manufacturing index fell to 53.3 in June from 54.0 in May, compared with forecasts for 53.9 in a Bloomberg-compiled poll, indicating a slower pace of expansion.The S&P Global US manufacturing index for June was revised down to 53.9 from the flash 55.7, versus expectations of no revision in a Bloomberg-compiled survey.
