Roundup: U.S. equities post weekly losses amid inflation anxiety, economic data

New York (US), November 14: U.S. stocks declined for the week as investors grew concerned over high inflation, while digesting a slew of economic data.
For the week ending Friday, the Dow declined 0.6 percent, the S&P 500 fell 0.3 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq slid 0.7 percent.
The S&P U.S. Listed China 50 index, which is designed to track the performance of the 50 largest Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges by total market cap, logged a weekly jump of 6.8 percent.
The biggest news to hit the tape this week was the sizable increase in U.S. inflation.
The Labor Department reported on Wednesday that a key U.S. inflation reading surged to the highest level in three decades.
The consumer price index (CPI) soared 0.9 percent in October, for a 6.2 percent year-on-year increase, according to the latest report released by the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Core CPI, which excludes the volatile food and energy components, rose 0.6 percent last month, for a 4.6 percent year-on-year increase, showed the report.
These were the highest year-on-year readings for the headline index since 1990 and the core index since 1991.
"The question of inflation in 2021 has never been about whether prices would go up -- it's been about how much and for how long," analysts at Zacks Investment Management said Saturday in a note.
"So far, the answers to the latter seem to be that inflation is going up more than expected and for longer than expected, though the Federal Reserve continues to lean into the notion that inflation is 'transitory,' largely a product of temporary supply chain issues being met with record consumer demand," they added.
Kevin Matras, executive vice president at Zacks Investment Research, said that "while some of the current inflation pressures, indeed, are pandemic-related and temporary, other pressures look less transient and could be with us for an extended period of time."
Though it is still possible to make the case that the causes of inflation are transitory, it is getting more difficult to defend not doing anything about it, noted Chris Low, chief economist at FHN Financial.
The preliminary reading of the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index tumbled to 66.8 in November, the lowest level in a decade, the university reported on Friday. The reading fell short of economists' estimates of 72.5.
According to the report, the marked pullback in November's sentiment was mainly attributed to two reasons, inflation and the growing conviction policy makers are not doing anything to make it stop.
On another economic front, U.S. initial jobless claims, a rough way to measure layoffs, registered 267,000 in the week ending Nov. 6, following an upwardly revised level of 271,000 in the prior week, the Department of Labor said on Wednesday. The report was released a day earlier than normal because of the Veterans Day holiday.
Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had estimated new claims would total a seasonally adjusted 265,000.
Source: Xinhua