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U.S. consumer sentiment drops to six-month low in May
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News Corp beats quarterly profit estimates
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Indexes down: Dow 0.5%, S&P 500 0.7%, Nasdaq 0.9%
(New throughout, updates indexes to late afternoon levels
paragraph 8, adds quote paragraph 5, adds NEW YORK dateline)
By Caroline Valetkevitch
NEW YORK May 12 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell Friday
afternoon, led by weaker technology-related shares following
their recent rally, as data showed U.S. consumer sentiment
dropped to a six-month low.
Tesla Inc shares slid 2.4% after jumping more than
2% on Thursday, when Elon Musk announced he had found a new
chief executive for Twitter.
Musk tweeted Friday he had picked former NBCUniversal
advertising chief Linda Yaccarino as Twitter's new CEO.
The S&P 500 technology sector was down 0.9%, with
shares of Apple Inc falling 1.3%. The technology index
is still up about 21% so far this year.
"They've had an incredible run, so those valuation concerns
are starting to manifest themselves," said Peter Tuz, president
of Chase Investment Counsel in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Adding to investor worries, May consumer sentiment dropped
to its lowest since November as a standoff to raise the federal
government's borrowing cap fanned worries about the economic
outlook.
Investors worry that the Federal Reserve's aggressive
interest rates hikes could push the economy into recession.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 172.16 points,
or 0.52%, to 33,137.35; the S&P 500 lost 29 points, or
0.70%, at 4,101.62; and the Nasdaq Composite dropped
112.30 points, or 0.91%, to 12,216.21.
The Congressional Budget Office said on Friday the U.S.
faces a "significant risk" of defaulting on payment obligations
within the first two weeks of June without a debt ceiling
increase.
Fed Governor Michelle Bowman said the central bank would
probably need to raise rates further if inflation stays high.
Among gainers, First Solar Inc shares jumped after
the solar panel maker acquired Sweden's thin-film solar cell
technology firm Evolar AB.
News Corp gained 5.9% after the media conglomerate
beat Wall Street estimates for third-quarter profit.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by a
2.30-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.08-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted 19 new 52-week highs and 15 new lows; the
Nasdaq Composite recorded 51 new highs and 201 new lows.
(Additional reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal and Shristi Achar A
in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Arun Koyyur,
Anil D'Silva and Richard Chang)
