It wasn’t one of those champagne-popping, record-topping ends to the week on Wall Street.
The bubbles went flat as traders spent the day executing sell orders on tech stocks, which soured the sentiment across the board.
The S&P 500 closed 1.1% lower while the blue-chip Dow fell 0.5%.
The tech-centric Nasdaq tumbled 1.9%. The technology sector within the S&P 500 lost 2.9% as AI punters decided to take some profits off the table in double-jig time.
The cloud-computing company Oracle, which had prompted the tech wobble earlier in the week with a disturbing mix of weak earnings forecasts and massive spending commitments, dropped another 4.5% on top of Thursday’s 11% capitulation.
Chipmaker Broadcom closed 11% lower after issuing a warning about its margins, and AI leader Nvidia shed another 3.3%.
Granite Wealth Management Managing Director Bruce Zaro told Reuters that “continued disappointment and uncertainty over the AI trade and technology trade” pressured the market.
“I would have thought this choppiness would have ended by now,” he said.
“We’re in a really, really good seasonal period. Typically, mid-December through the last trading days of the year is traditionally the Santa Claus rally period.”
European stocks also closed lower with the broad Eurostoxx 600 shedding 0.6%, while the global MSCI was also down 0.6%.
Over the week, the S&P 500 fell 0.5%, while the ASX was one of the better performers, picking up 0.7%, matching the effort of the Nikkei.
However, if futures markets are anything to go by, the ASX will give up a fair chunk of last week’s gains, pricing in a 0.6% loss on opening.
US Treasury yields rose in line with the global vibe that most central banks were nearing the end of their current easing cycle.
The US dollar was generally stronger, although the Aussie dollar largely held its ground against the greenback. It notched its third successive week of gains and hit its highest weekly close in almost fourteen months.
On commodity markets, oil prices slipped due to ongoing worries about oversupply building into next year.
The global benchmark Brent crude fell 1.5% to be down almost 4% over the week.
Gold pushed above $US4,300 an ounce, while silver slipped on profit taking and copper eased 3% after almost hitting $US12,000/tonne and a new record high.
Overnight, Bitcoin again dived back under $US90,000.