Wall Street in the red, weak economic data did not encourage investors

Jan 18 (Reuters) – Major US stocks turned lower on Wednesday after gaining at the open of trading, as a block of US economic slowdown data failed to anchor hopes for a slowdown in the pace of future Fed rate hikes.

Producer prices in the US fell 0.5% m/m in December, beating the forecast, while retail sales fell 1.1% compared to November.

Louis Fed Chairman James Bullard said on Wednesday that interest rates should rise to 5% or more, echoing the sentiment of other officials.

The US reporting season is also in the spotlight. Analysts expect S&P 500 earnings to decline 2.6% for the quarter year-on-year, compared with a 1.6% decline forecast in early 2023, according to Refinitiv data.

By 19:08 Moscow time, the Dow Jones index fell by 0.75% to 33.656.42 points, the S&P 500 – by 0.40% to 3.975.06 points, and the Nasdaq – by 0.22% to 11.071.11 points.

Shares of Moderna Inc jumped 5.1% after the company demonstrated the effectiveness of a vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus.

IBM Corp fell 1.3% following Morgan Stanley’s downgrading of the company’s recommendation to Hold from Buy, citing slower earnings growth.

The original message in English is available at the code: (Shubham Batra, Shreyashi Sanyal, Amruta Khandekar and Ankika Biswas in Bangalore, translated by Tomas Kanik)