US stocks end downcast Q1 on losing note

Wall Street stocks dropped on Thursday in a weak finale to a downcast quarter during which equities retreated on worries about tightening monetary policy and the Russian attack on Ukraine.

Thursday’s losses in the equity market came as oil prices tumbled following President Joe Biden’s sweeping announcement of an unprecedented release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Equities were in the red the entire day, but lost ground especially in the last hour of trading in a shift analysts attributed to end-of-quarter portfolio flows.

“It feels like we are at a better place at the end of the quarter than we were starting the quarter,” said Art Hogan, chief strategist at National Securities.

The broad-based S&P 500 finished at 4,530, down 1.6 percent for the day and just under five percent for the quarter.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 1.6 percent in the session to close at 34,678, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 1.5 percent to 14,221.

Labour Department data showed that fewer Americans were receiving regular unemployment benefits than at any time in more than five decades.

However, other economic data showed disappointing US spending figures in February as shoppers contended with a 6.4 percent jump in prices compared to February 2021.

The reports come ahead of Friday’s closely-anticipated government jobs data.

Wall Street stocks tumbled in the first two months of 2022 amid worries over the Ukraine crisis and the Federal Reserve’s moves to tighten policy and rein in inflation.

Equities have rebounded somewhat in March, partly on a sense the market has been oversold.

“The market is at a place where we’ve priced in efficiently a lot of the headwinds that are ahead of us,” Hogan said. (AFP)