Stocks edge lower on Wall Street, led by weakness in tech

Stocks edged lower in afternoon trading on Wall Street Wednesday, pulled down by losses in big technology and communications companies.

The S&P 500 fell 0.4% as of 12:50 p.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 114 points, or 0.3%, to 36,205 and the Nasdaq fell 0.7%.

Losses from technology companies weighed on the market. Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices shed 4.4%. Google’s parent, Alphabet, fell 1.5% and Facebook’s parent company Meta fell 1.8%.

U.S. crude oil prices fell 3.1% and pulled energy stocks lower. Occidental Petroleum shed 3.9%.

Rivian Automotive, an electric truck maker backed by Amazon and Ford, soared 41% on its first day of trading.

DoorDash jumped 14.8% after reporting surprisingly strong third-quarter revenue and announcing that it is buying Finnish delivery service Wolt Enterprises, expanding its reach into Europe and other markets. Entertainment giant Walt Disney will report results after the closing bell.

Investors were given another disappointing update on rising inflation. The Labor Department reported that prices for U.S. consumers jumped 6.2% in October compared with a year earlier as surging costs for food, gas and housing left Americans grappling with the highest inflation rate since 1990. The jump in inflation was hotter than economists expected and follows a report on Tuesday that wholesale prices jumped 8.6% in October, matching a record annual gain.

Bond yields rose significantly following the latest report on consumer prices. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 1.57% from 1.43% late Tuesday.

The broader market is showing signs of cooling after weeks of solid gains as Wall Street continues to grapple with the impact from persistent rising inflation. Investors are also trying to gauge how different industries will benefit as the pandemic subsides.

“It’s a fight between growth and value and neither one is really getting the upper hand lately,” said Tom Martin, senior portfolio manager with Globalt Investments. “You’re going to have a decent market until year end and at some point, you’ll see folks really starting to try to position themselves for what they think 2022 could look like.”

Rising inflation has been a key concern for investors as they gauge the pace of the economic recovery and prepare for the Federal Reserve to begin trimming its bond purchases, which have helped maintain low interest rates.

Companies are facing higher prices on raw materials, along with supply chain problems that threaten to hurt earnings growth. Consumers are facing higher prices for a wide range of products, and that has raised concerns that a potential pullback in spending could stunt the recovery.

The latest round of corporate earnings allayed some of those fears as many companies managed to report solid results.