Wall Street stocks finished mostly lower, with technology shares especially weak, as markets girded for a second major US hurricane in less than two weeks. / AFP PHOTO
NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — Wall Street stocks finished mostly lower Friday, with technology shares especially weak, as markets girded for a second major US hurricane in less than two weeks.
Florida’s highways were jammed with families fleeing their homes as Hurricane Irma honed in on the Sunshine State after killing at least 17 people across the Caribbean.
“With this Irma storm bearing down on Florida, it is creating a lot of near term uncertainty,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank.
Major storms like Irma and Harvey, which pummeled Houston late last month, typically weigh on short-term economic activity, although there is a bounce later when rebuilding gets underway.
Ablin said the storms could delay plans by the Federal Reserve to raise the benchmark interest rate a third time this year.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.1 percent to end at 21,797.79.
But the broad-based S&P 500 shed 0.2 percent to 2,461.43, and the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index tumbled 0.6 percent to 6,360.19.
Large tech shares such as Apple, Google parent Alphabet, Facebook and Tesla Motors all lost at least one percent.
But insurers, which have been weak in some recent sessions, rallied. Dow member Travelers won 4.0 percent, while Allstate climbed 3.7 percent.
Credit reporting agency Equifax sank 13.7 percent after it disclosed that it suffered a hack that affected as many as 143 million US customers, nearly half the country’s population.
But shares of cybersecurity companies gained, with Symantec advancing 3.4 percent, and FireEye 1.5 percent.
Supermarket chain Kroger fell 7.5 percent as it posted a 7.8 percent drop in second-quarter profits to $353 million as aggressive pricing cuts dampened earnings.
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