Wall Street ends lower on mounting inflation worries

STORY: Wall Street's main indexes retreated from AI-fueled record highs on Friday, with the Dow dropping 1%, the S&P 500 shedding one-and-a-quarter percent and the Nasdaq declining more than one-and-a-half percent.Stocks moved lower as a jump in benchmark Treasury yields reflected surging energy prices and concerns about long-term inflation.Leah Bennett is chief investment strategist at Concurrent Investment Advisors.“Equities are trading down today primarily, I think, because people are disappointed not to see any sort of movement between Trump and Xi coming out of the summit regarding the conflict in the Middle East. So, oil is up another 4% today. We obviously saw an impact on the CPI (Consumer Price Index) and the PPI (Producer Price Index). And the longer that oil prices stay up, the longer we're going to have rising inflation. And this is the first time we've really seen the ten-year inflation expectations cross 2.5%. And historically, that's been very consistent with a period where the Fed had to increase interest rates.”Friday marks Jerome Powell's last day as U.S. Federal Reserve chair. Incoming Chair Kevin Warsh is saddled with the potential need for a rate hike if a protracted Iran war leads to sticky inflation.Among individual stock moves, the AI rally largely stalled, with Nvidia losing nearly 4.5%, AMD shedding more than 5.5% and Intel dropping more than 6%.On the flip side, shares of Microsoft rose 3% following the disclosure of a new position in the company taken by Bill Ackman's hedge fund Pershing Square.And shares of Ford slid about 7.5%, retreating from a near 21% surge over the last two sessions on optimism over the automaker's energy storage business.