A frigid February for Wall Street closed out with more losses on Tuesday. The S&P 500 fell 0.3% points to 3,970.15 to lock in a loss of 2.6% for the month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 232.39 points, or 0.7%, to 32,656.70. The Nasdaq composite fell 11.44 points, or 0.1%, to 11,455.54. Both also sank over the month. After a strong start to the year bolstered by hopes that inflation was on the way down, Wall Street shifted into reverse in February, the AP reports. A stream of data showed inflation and the overall economy are remaining more resilient than expected. That’s forced investors to raise their forecasts for how high the Federal Reserve will take interest rates and how long it will keep them there.
The Fed has said it wants rates to climb to a "sufficiently restrictive" level where the economy slows enough to drive down inflation. Now the S&P 500 is hanging onto a gain of 3.7% for the year. "Everything is sort of churning," says Thomas Martin, senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments. "Right now, the economy is doing fairly well, but earnings estimates for 2023 for the S&P 500 are continuing to drift lower. So you’re still moving in a softening direction. It’s just: How close do you get to the ground?" Reports on the economy released Tuesday showed some slight cracks. One said that confidence among US consumers unexpectedly fell in February. Another said that manufacturing in the Chicago region weakened by more than expected.
Most companies have already reported their results for the last three months of 2022, but several big-name retailers are still on the schedule for this week. Among them was Target, which on Tuesday reported better profit and revenue than expected for the latest quarter. But it also echoed some other retailers in giving a cautious forecast for upcoming results as US households contend with still-high inflation. Its stock rose 0.9%. On the losing end was Norwegian Cruise Line. It tumbled 10.2% after reporting a bigger loss for the latest quarter than expected. It also gave profit forecasts for the upcoming quarter and year that fell short of Wall Street's.
(More
stock market stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
