Wall Street Bulls retreated on Friday as tech stocks slid and inflation pinched investors. Tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index bore the bearish brunt and plunged 1.6% minutes after the opening bell.
The wider index S&P 500 opened 1% lower at 7,431.36, Nasdaq opened 1.3% or 346 points lower at 26,288.92, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened 0.60% lower at 49,760.76.
US President Donald Trump's much anticipated meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping concluded earlier in the day with little to no clarity or confirmation on any major AI-related deals.
Accordingly, semiconductor majors and chipmakers took a beating. Nvidia Corp. broke its week long rally to plunge over 4% to $226.37 in its biggest drop since April, Micron Technology Inc. opened 6% lower at $736.56, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. traded 4.8% lower at $430.84.
Trump had announced that China has agreed to buy US oil, soybeans and 200 Boeing jets, with a potential commitment to purchase up to 750 planes, though there was no confirmation from Chinese officials.
However, on many key issues such as the supply chain restrictions on tech companies, there were no concrete announcements.
The sharpest fall was seen in Intel Corp. which traded 6.3% lower at $108.57. Besides this, shares of Microchip Technology Inc. were down 3% to $94.
After the market opened, all except three of the 11 sectoral indices traded in the red. The decline was led by the materials, information technology, and industrials sectors.
Only the Energy sector (at the behest of rising crude oil prices), Consumer Staples Sector, and Financials sector were trading higher.
Crude oil continued to advance with West Texas Intermediate up 3% to $104.17 per barrel and global benchmark Brent Crude trading 2.53% higher at $108.39.
There was no clear breakthrough between Washington and Beijing regarding the Iran war, apart from Trump claiming that him and Xi were largely on the same page about the conflict. According to Trump, China has agreed not to supply Iran with military equipment but will continue buying their oil.
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