Wall Street Ends Mixed After Punishing Week

Wall Street ended mixed on Friday after a volatile session that saw Tesla slump and other growth stocks also lose ground.

Photo Insert: The NYSE trading floor

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq logged their seventh straight week of losses, their longest losing streak since the end of the dotcom bubble in 2001, Noel Randewich and Amruta Khandekar reported for Reuters.

The Dow suffered its eighth consecutive weekly decline, its longest since 1932 during the Great Depression. Worries about surging inflation and rising interest rates have pummeled the U.S. stock market this year, with danger signals from Walmart Inc. and other retailers this week adding to fears about the economy.

The S&P 500 spent most of the session in negative territory and at one point was down just over 20% from its Jan. 3 record high close before ending down 18% from that level and flat for the day.

Closing down 20% from that record level would confirm the S&P 500 has been in a bear market since reaching that January high, according to a common definition.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq was last down about 27% from its record close in November 2021. Weighing heavily on the S&P 500, Tesla tumbled 6.4% after Chief Executive Elon Musk denounced as "utterly untrue" claims in a news report that he sexually harassed a flight attendant on a private jet in 2016.

Other megacap stocks also fell, with Apple Google-owner Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) down 1.3% and Nvidia losing 2.5%. Shares of Deere & Co (DE.N) dropped 14% after the heavy equipment maker posted downbeat quarterly revenue. Pfizer rose 3.6%, helping the S&P 500 avoid a loss for the day.

Recent disappointing forecasts from big retailers Walmart, Kohl's Corp, and Target Inc have rattled market sentiment, adding to evidence that rising prices have started to hurt the purchasing power of US consumers.

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