Wall Street slumps as worries worsen about inflation and tariffs

NEW YORK (AP) - U.S. stocks slumped Friday as worries flared again on Wall Street about tariffs and inflation.

The S&P 500 fell 0.9% and erased what had been a modest gain for the week. It's one of the worse drops for the index so far in the young year, but it remains near its record set two weeks ago.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 444 points, or 1%, and a sharp fall for Amazon after its latest profit report dragged the Nasdaq composite to a market-leading loss of 1.4%.

Treasury yields also climbed in the bond market after a discouraging report on Friday morning suggested sentiment is unexpectedly souring among U.S. consumers. The preliminary report from the University of Michigan said U.S. consumers are expecting inflation in the year ahead to hit 4.3%, the highest such forecast since 2023.

That's a full percentage point above what consumers said they were expecting a month earlier, and it's the second straight increase of an unusual amount. Economists pointed to the possibility of U.S. tariffs on a wide range of imported products, which President Donald Trump has proposed and could ultimately push up prices for U.S. consumers.

Trump said at a White House press conference Friday that he's likely to have an announcement on Monday or Tuesday on "reciprocal tariffs, where a country pays so much or charges us so much, and we do the same."

The consumer-sentiment data followed a mixed update on the U.S. job market, which is often each month's most anticipated economic report. It showed hiring last month was less than half of December's rate, but it also included encouraging nuggets for workers: The unemployment rate eased, and workers saw bigger gains in average wages than economists expected.

All the data taken together could keep the Federal Reserve on hold when it comes to interest rates. The Fed began cutting its main interest rate in September in order to relax the pressure on the economy and job market, but it warned at the end of the year that it may cut fewer times in 2025 than it earlier expected given worries about inflation staying stubbornly high.

Interest rates are one of the things Wall Street cares most about because lower rates can lead to higher prices for stocks and other investments. The downside is they can also give inflation more fuel.

For Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, the jobs report did nothing to change his forecast for the Fed to cut the federal funds rate just once in 2025. That's a touch more conservative than many traders on Wall Street, who collectively see a 45% chance the Fed will cut at least twice, according to data from CME Group. Of course, some traders are also betting on the possibility for zero cuts.

Wren said financial markets could stay shaky in the near term, not only because of uncertainty about interest rates but also about Trump's tariffs and other unknowns around the world.

After rocking financial markets at the start of this week, worries about a potentially punishing global trade war had eased a bit after Trump gave 30-day reprieves for tariffs on both Mexico and Canada.

In the meantime, stocks of big U.S. companies continue to swing as they report how much profit they made during the last three months of 2024. Most are reporting better results than expected, which is typical, but that's not always enough.

Amazon, one of Wall Street's most influential companies, topped analysts' expectations for earnings at the end of 2024, but its stock nevertheless fell 4.1%. Investors focused instead on its forecast for upcoming revenue, which fell short of analysts' expectations.

Homebuilders also tumbled to sharp losses as fewer cuts to interest rates by the Fed could help keep mortgage rates high. D.R. Horton fell 5%, and Lennar sank 4.2%.

On the winning side of Wall Street was Expedia Group, which leaped 17.3% after reporting better profit for the last three months of 2024 than analysts had forecast.

Expedia CEO Ariane Gorin said demand for travel during the latest quarter was stronger than expected, and the company is also bringing back its dividend for investors. It had suspended its payouts to shareholders in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic crushed the travel industry.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 57.58 points to 6,025.99. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 444.23 to 44,303.40, and the Nasdaq composite sank 268.59 to 19,523.40.

In the bond market, the 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.48% from 4.44% late Thursday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for the Fed, rose more. It climbed to 4.28% from 4.22%.

A fear among economists is that when U.S. households expect inflation to be high in the future, they could begin buying things in advance and making other moves that can leadto a self-fulfilling cycle that worsens inflation. That could push the Fed to keep the federal funds rate higher than it otherwise would.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell modestly across Europe after finishing mixed in Asia.