Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during morning trading on April 10, 2023 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
Stocks fell Wednesday as recession concerns weighed on Wall Street, even as traders assessed the release of cooler-than-expected inflation data.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 83 points, or 0.2%, giving back gains from earlier in the day when the index was up by more than 200 points. The S&P 500 declined 0.5%, and the Nasdaq Composite fell by 0.8%.
Those moves come after minutes from the Federal Reserve’s March policy meeting showed officials feared that the economy could tilt into a mild recession later this year in the wake of the U.S. banking crisis.
“Given their assessment of the potential economic effects of the recent banking-sector developments, the staff’s projection at the time of the March meeting included a mild recession starting later this year, with a recovery over the subsequent two years,” read the meeting summary on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” Richmond Federal Reserve President Thomas Barkin said that, while peak inflation may be behind the U.S., “we still have a ways to go.”
Recession concerns continued to weigh on investors even as the March consumer price index came in cooler than expected, showing a rise of 0.1%. Economists polled by Dow Jones were expecting CPI to rise by 0.2% month over month.
“It is encouraging because it shows the direction is the way the Fed wants it to go, but I don’t think it’s enough to cause the Fed to stop raising rates,” said CFRA’s Sam Stovall.
Later in the week, the health of the U.S. economy and consumer will be put to the test as first-quarter earnings season kicks into full gear. Banking behemoths JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup are on deck, as well as health-care giant UnitedHealth.
