On Wall Street, stock prices fell on Wednesday, particularly in the technology sector, with investors focused on the meeting of the leaders of the American Fed, who left interest rates unchanged.
The Dow Jones weakened by 0.31 percent, to 44,713 points, while the S&P 500 slid 0.47 percent, to 6,039 points, and the Nasdaq index fell 0.51 percent, to 19,633 points.
The decline in the indices is primarily due to continued pressure on technology stocks, which has been ongoing since Monday when the success of the Chinese company DeepSeek’s application shook investors’ confidence that the U.S. leads in artificial intelligence development.
The price of Nvidia’s stock, the world’s largest producer of chips for artificial intelligence, fell again, by more than 4 percent, resulting in a loss of over 10 percent since the beginning of the week.
Investors were also focused on the messages from the leaders of the American central bank from the regular meeting where, as expected, they decided to keep interest rates unchanged.
However, in the Fed’s statement, they did not convey that “progress has been made” regarding inflation, as they had in previous months, but rather that the pace of price growth “remains elevated.”
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell stated at a press conference that the central bank does not need to rush to adjust policy, given that monetary policy is well positioned for upcoming challenges. This means that the Fed will not be reducing interest rates anytime soon.
Powell also mentioned that it is too early to say how President Donald Trump’s policies will affect the economy and inflation, so the Fed will wait until answers to that question become clearer.
In the past year, thanks to easing inflation in the U.S., the Fed reduced interest rates three times, by a total of one percentage point.
However, as the economy continues to grow steadily, while inflation remains significantly above the targeted two percent, only two rate cuts by the Fed are expected this year, totaling half a percentage point. This means that monetary policy cannot be expected to provide the same strong support to the capital market as it did last year.
Meanwhile, on most European exchanges, stock prices rose yesterday. The London FTSE index strengthened by 0.28 percent, to 8,557 points, while the Frankfurt DAX rose by 0.97 percent, to 21,637 points. The Paris CAC, on the other hand, weakened by 0.32 percent, to 7,872 points.
