Around 3:00 p.m. GMT, the Dow Jones fell 0.37%, the Nasdaq index dropped 1.13% and the broader S&P 500 index lost 0.85%.

Investors are worried about the acceleration in the rise in bond rates in recent days.

On Friday, the yield on 10-year US government bonds climbed to 3.92%, a first in three months.

“All eyes will be on the 10-year rate” during this last session of the week, warned Quincy Krosby of LPL Financial.

For the analyst, the two price indices, consumer (CPI) and producer (PPI), emerged this week above expectations, had misdirected the indices, but it is the escalation of bond rates and comments from central bankers that rocked the market.

On Thursday, Loretta Meester, Fed chairwoman in Cleveland, and James Bullard, who chairs the Fed office in St. Louis, both said they had spoken in favor of a half-point hike in percentage of the Federal Reserve's key rate at the recent meeting on January 31 and February 1.

The Fed's Monetary Policy Committee finally opted for a quarter-point hike.

Although neither of these two members of the Fed took part in votes on the key rate this year, "it was the straw that broke the camel's back," according to Quincy Krosby.

“It took time, but it seems that the eternal optimism of investors has been shaken,” abounded, in a note, Craig Erlam, of Oanda.

“The market is recalibrating,” according to Quincy Krosby.

This change in atmosphere is unfavorable to the technology sector, which had been on the rise on Wall Street since the beginning of the year but is now suffering from tighter credit conditions.

Microsoft (-1.75%), Alphabet (-1.51%) and Amazon (-1.86%) were among the worst hit stocks on Friday.

Conversely, so-called defensive stocks, i.e. sectors theoretically less sensitive to the economic situation, did well, like the health insurer UnitedHealth (+1.24%), largest weighting of the Dow Jones, or of Coca-Cola (+1.06%).

Elsewhere on the stock market, the manufacturer of tractors and construction machinery Deere was gaining ground (+5.93%) thanks to results well above expectations.

The Moline, Illinois group reported sustained demand, which led it to raise its annual targets.

The DoorDash meal delivery platform was down (-2.12%) despite quarterly revenue and forecasts for the current year being higher than analysts expected.

After having increased by more than 27% in ten days, the Manchester United title offered itself a breather (-0.75%), while the takeover offers of the English football club listed in New York must theoretically be filed at the most late Friday.

Two weeks after the derailment of one of its trains transporting chemical products in Ohio, the railway company Nofrolk Southern remained under pressure (-0.05%), residents of the accident area worrying about possible health consequences.

Since the incident, the stock has lost almost 11%.

The Moderna laboratory (-5.90%) paid for the mixed interim results of clinical trials of its flu vaccine using messenger RNA technology, published Thursday.

Fear of the consequences on the economy of an environment of high interest rates weighed on oil prices and, by extension, on oil stocks, in particular ExxonMobil (-3.05%) and ConocoPhillips (-3.27%).

© 2023 AFP