NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks mostly declined early Tuesday, extending a pullback on worries over central bank policy as markets await the president’s annual State of the Union address.
Stocks have been on the back leg since Friday’s blowout US jobs report raised worries about a longer period of aggressive monetary policy to rein in inflation.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is scheduled to speak at an event in Washington later on Tuesday.
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Powell “is speaking at noon, and the market is going to be responding as if it were a press conference,” said Quincy Krosby of LPL Financial.
Krosby added that the market is questioning whether the jobs data, released after the Fed’s most recent rate decision, could prolong the central bank’s streak of interest rate hikes.
About 15 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.4 percent to 33,771.99.
The broad-based S&P 500 shed 0.2 percent to 4,103.58, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index added 0.1 percent at 11,894.05.
Investors are also looking ahead to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.
Biden is expected to highlight the strong job market and progress in mitigating inflation.
But his speech comes on the heels of the Pentagon’s move over the weekend to shoot down a Chinese balloon, which sparked criticism from Beijing.
Data released Tuesday showed the US trade deficit grew $103.0 billion from 2021 to $948.1 billion last year, hitting a record.
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