At one point Friday morning, the Dow was up nearly 200 points, notes CNBC. But by the time the closing bell rang, all those gains had been erased en route to a five-day losing streak. Health care, technology, and communications stocks in particular weighed on the market, per the AP. Those losses offset gains by industrial stocks and a mix of retailers and other companies that rely on direct consumer spending. The Dow fell 271 points to 34,607, the S&P 500 fell 34 points to 4,458, and the Nasdaq fell 132 points to 15,115. Stocks have traded in a relatively narrow range for several weeks, with most investors sitting on the sidelines waiting to get a fuller understanding of where the economy is headed and how the pandemic is affecting corporations.
“There isn't any new good news coming, and that’s important because we’ve gotten a decent amount of good news that has flowed up until this point this year,” said Liz Young, head of investment strategy at personal finance company SoFi. Investors got a negative piece of inflation data on Friday. Inflation at the wholesale level climbed 8.3% last month from August 2020, the biggest annual gain since the Labor Department started calculating the 12-month number in 2010. Federal Reserve policymakers have said they believe inflation this year would be temporary and is a result of the economy recovering from the pandemic. However, persistently high inflation could force the Fed's hand to start pulling back on its bond-buying program and low interest rate policy sooner than anticipated.
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