Wall Street ends with a slight loss in the face of a more aggressive Fed

The New York Stock Exchange ended slightly lower on Monday following a speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, in which he was willing to make more aggressive adjustments to the benchmark interest rate.

In addition, the oil market soared sharply, with crude oil prices gaining more than 7%.

The results in the closing campaign showed the Dow Jones index, which last week had its best performance since the end of 2020, falling from 0.58% to 34,552.99 units.

Meanwhile the Nasdaq technology lost 0.40% to 13,838.46 points, and the expanded S&P 500 index dropped a marginal 0.04% to 4,461.18 units.

The Fed could raise its rates “more aggressively” in 2022 if it deems it necessary, Powell said, after the monetary entity increased its reference rates for the first time in two years last week.

“If we conclude that it is appropriate to act more aggressively by increasing the guideline rates by more than 25 basis points in a meeting or several meetings (ndlr: of the monetary policy committee), we will do so,” Powell said during the annual conference of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE).

The Fed raised its target rates on Wednesday for the first time since 2018, to fight inflation, which peaked in 40 years in the United States.

Inflation reached 7.9% at 12 months last February, according to the Department of Commerce's CPI index. The Fed prefers to abide by the PCE index which accounts for 6.1% at 12 months in January.

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