Wall Street slumps to a rare three-day losing streak

U.S. stocks fell Wednesday as more steam came out of Wall Street’s huge, record-breaking rally.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 sank 0.9% for its first three-day losing streak since early September. It was coming off two small losses since setting an all-time high on Friday, and the pullback follows a superb run in which the index had rallied for six straight winning weeks, its longest such streak of the year.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 409 points, or 1%, while the Nasdaq composite tumbled 1.6%; Nvidia and other major tech stocks were among the market’s heaviest weights.

Momentum has reversed for stocks this week as pressure has increased from rising Treasury yields. Higher yields can make investors less willing to pay high prices for stocks, which critics say already look too expensive after having risen faster than corporate profits.

“Slowly, then suddenly,” stock investors have been noticing the moves in the bond market, along with the rally for the U.S. dollar’s value against other currencies, according to Jonathan Krinsky at BTIG.

McDonald’s helped pull the market lower, dropping 5.1% after federal health officials linked its Quarter Pounder burgers with an E. coli outbreak that has affected at least 49 people in 10 states. Investigators are still trying to find what specific ingredient is contaminated, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said McDonald’s stopped using fresh slivered onions and quarter-pound beef patties in several states while the investigation continues.

Coca-Cola fell 2.1% even though it reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The company benefited from higher prices for its products, but a lot of focus was on how much product the company shipped during the quarter, and that fell short of some estimates.

Boeing slipped 1.8% in what could be one of the most consequential days in years for the troubled aerospace manufacturer.

The company reported a loss of more than $6 billion for the latest quarter, as it waited to see the results of a vote by machinists later in the day that could end a production-crippling strike. Boeing stock has lost nearly 40% this year.

The market’s most consequential losses came from major tech stocks. They have been battling criticism for a while that their prices soared too high amid Wall Street’s frenzy around artificial intelligence technology. Nvidia’s 2.8% drop and Apple’s 2.2% fall were the two heaviest weights on the S&P 500.

Helping to limit the losses for indexes was AT&T, which rose 4.6% after reporting stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

Texas Instruments climbed 4% after the semiconductor company reported stronger profit and revenue than analysts expected. Chief Executive Haviv Ilan said that although revenue from industrial users declined from the prior quarter, all other end markets grew.

Northern Trust rallied 7% after likewise topping analysts’ estimates for profit and revenue in the latest quarter.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 53.78 points to 5,797.42. The Dow dropped 409.94 points to 42,514.95, and the Nasdaq composite fell 296.47 points to 18,276.65.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose again to 4.23% from 4.21% late Tuesday and from just 4.08% on Friday.

Treasury yields have been climbing after a raft of reports have shown the U.S. economy remains stronger than expected. That’s good news for Wall Street, because it bolsters hopes that the economy can escape from the worst inflation in generations without the painful recession that many had worried was inevitable.

Traders are now largely expecting the Federal Reserve to cut its main interest rate by half a percentage point more through the end of the year, according to data from CME Group. A month ago, some of those same traders were betting on the federal funds rate ending the year as much as half a percentage point lower than that.

In stock markets abroad, Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.8% despite a surge for Tokyo Metro Co.’s stock in Japan’s largest market debut since SoftBank Corp. went public in 2018.

Chinese markets rose for a second day after the central bank cut its one-year and five-year loan prime rates on Monday. Indexes rose 1.3% in Hong Kong and 0.5% in Shanghai, while European markets were modestly lower.

Choe writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Matt Ott and Zimo Zhong contributed to this report.