news/AAPL/2023.01.03/Wall St falters at start of 2023 as Apple, Tesla shares fall.txt

(For a Reuters live blog on U.S., UK and European stock
markets, click LIVE/ or type LIVE/ in a news window)*Tesla drops on Q4 deliveries miss*Apple hits lowest since June 2021*Indexes down: Dow 0.58%, S&P 0.85%, Nasdaq 1.26%Jan 3 (Reuters) - Wall Street's main indexes dropped on
the first trading day of 2023 due to heavy losses in Tesla and
Apple, while investors awaited minutes from the last policy
meeting of the Federal Reserve for more clarity on the path of
interest rate hikes.The electric-vehicle maker fell 13.7% after missing
Wall Street estimates for quarterly deliveries and iPhone maker
Apple Inc dropped 3.9% to its lowest since June 2021
following a rating downgrade due to production cuts in China.Consumer discretionary and technology stocks
slipped more than 1% each.The energy sector, which logged stellar gains in
2022, slid 2.7%, tracking lower oil prices on bleak business
activity data from China and concerns about the outlook for the
global economy amid recession worries..Other rate-sensitive technology and growth stocks such as
Alphabet Inc, Meta Platforms Inc and
Amazon.com Inc were up between 0.9% and 2.9%."The market, like today, is not very much about fundamentals
or news, it's more about the emotion of a start of a new year
and investors trying to decide if a recovery is in front of
them," said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments in
New Vernon, New Jersey."Given last year's weak performance, I would certainly
expect a better year ahead."The main stock indexes ended 2022 with their steepest annual
losses since 2008 following the Fed's fastest pace of rate hikes
since the 1980s to stamp out decades-high inflation.The S&P 500 shed 19.4% in 2022, marking a roughly $8
trillion decline in market capitalization, while the Nasdaq fell
33.1%, dragged down by growth stocks.Investors on Wednesday will closely monitor the minutes of
the Fed's December policy meeting, when the central bank raised
interest rates by 50 basis points after four straight 75-bps
hikes and signaled rates could stay higher for longer.Other economic data due this week includes December's jobs
report and the ISM manufacturing report.Weakness in the labor market could give the Fed a reason to
ease its monetary policy tightening, but the data so far has
shown that the market remains tight despite interest rate hikes.Money market participants see a 68% chance the Fed will
raise the benchmark rate by 25 bps to 4.50%-4.75% in February,
with the rates peaking at 4.98% by June.At 12:17 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average
was down 190.79 points, or 0.58%, at 32,956.46, the S&P 500
was down 32.46 points, or 0.85%, at 3,807.04, and the
Nasdaq Composite was down 131.84 points, or 1.26%, at
10,334.64.U.S.-listed Chinese firms such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd
, JD.com Inc, Pinduoduo Inc rose between
1% and 4% on post-COVID recovery hopes.Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.16-to-1 ratio
on the NYSE and by a 1.08-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.The S&P index recorded one new 52-week highs and 5 new lows,
while the Nasdaq recorded 80 new highs and 32 new lows.
(Reporting by Shubham Batra, Ankika Biswas and Amruta Khandekar
in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Arun Koyyur)