New York (AFP)
The New York Stock Exchange started the session sharply lower on Wednesday, still worried about inflation and its consequences for the Fed's monetary policy as bitcoin plunged.
Around 2:00 p.m. GMT, the Dow Jones dropped 1.27%, the Nasdaq lost 1.14% and the S&P 500 dropped 1.24%.
Bitcoin, which less than two weeks ago was still hovering around $ 60,000, melted 20% on Wednesday to $ 35,097.
The most popular cryptocurrency suffered from comments from Chinese banking federations that these currencies "are not real currencies".
The day before on Wall Street, for the second session in a row, the main indices of the New York place had retreated.
The Dow Jones had lost 0.78% to 34,060.66 points, the Nasdaq, with a strong technological coloring, had dropped 0.56% to 13,303.64 points and the extended S&P 500 index had dropped 0.85% to 4,127, 83 points.
"We are witnessing a major liquidation at all levels," commented for AFP Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital Securities.
"Bitcoin is plunging and shaking the market. Gold is going up, it looks like investors are trying to find refuge in traditional hedge assets," he added.
For Schwab analysts, "markets remain hampered by uncertainty over the implications of rising inflationary pressures on monetary policies and very low interest rates."
Investors will focus their attention Wednesday on the minutes of the last monetary meeting of the American Central Bank (Fed), which ensures that the inflation which begins to appear is transitory.
Yields on ten-year Treasuries climbed to 1.6427% from 1.6369% the previous day.
The American distribution groups Target (+ 3.45%) and Lowes (-1.48%) announced on Wednesday better than expected results.
But the fall in titles was almost general.
The eleven sectors of the S&P were in the red, starting with energy (-2.54%), consumer goods (-1.98%), industrial groups (-1.75%) and technologies information (-1.53%).
Even the titles of vaccine manufacturers plunged like Pfizer (-1.05%), Moderna (-1.72%) or BioNTech (-3.20%).
© 2021 AFP