The autumn pullback in the US stock market further worsened on Friday, dragging the S&P 500 index into the correction zone, setting its largest two week decline since the beginning of this year.
The S&P 500 index has been fluctuating for most of the session and has since started to decline, closing down 0.5%, down more than 10% from its recent high. Chevron and JPMorgan Chase stock prices fell, dragging the Dow Jones index down 367 points, closing at its lowest closing level since March this year, a 1.1% drop.
The Nasdaq Composite Index barely rose 0.4%, but this tech dominated index closed well below its intraday high. The index entered a correction earlier this week and has been declining for three consecutive weeks.
In October, the market sentiment became bleak. Investors were analyzing a wave of financial reports issued by some large American companies, and they were also experiencing a serious slump in treasury bond. In early trading on Monday, the yield of 10-year US treasury bond bonds exceeded 5% for the first time in 16 years, making many investors focus on the treasury bond market all week. The yield closed at 4.846% on Friday.
Alphabet's financial report disappointed investors, causing the stock to decline by nearly 10% this week, marking its worst performance since November last year. The stock price of Meta Platforms fell by approximately 3.9%. Chevron's stock price fell 13%, marking its largest weekly decline in over a year, after the company reported quarterly profits that were significantly lower than the same period last year.
The rise in treasury bond bond yields is particularly painful for small cap stocks in the market. The Russell 2000 Small Cap Index fell 2.6% this week, closing at its lowest level since at least November 2020.
The S&P 500 index's growth since the beginning of this year has narrowed to 7.2%, significantly lower than the index's nearly 20% increase in July.