Wall St slips in choppy trade after Powell’s speech

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Wall Street’s main indexes extended losses on Friday after Federal Reserve Chief Jerome Powell’s comments suggested the central bank will keep raising interest rates to tame inflation, prompting traders to bet on a big move next month.

The U.S. economy will need tight monetary policy “for some time” before inflation is under control, a fact that means slower growth, a weaker job market and “some pain” for households and businesses, Powell said in remarks, warning there is no quick cure for fast rising prices.

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Money market traders saw about 55% odds of a 75 basis point rate hike in September versus 45% before the speech.

Rate-sensitive banks slipped 0.2% as the U.S. two-year Treasury yield briefly hit its highest level since October 2007 before falling.

High-growth stocks that tend to outperform in a low interest rate environment, also fell. Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc were down between 0.2% and 2.1%.

Data earlier showed U.S. consumer spending barely rose in July, but inflation eased considerably, which could give the Fed room to scale back its aggressive interest rate increases.

At 10:13 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 45.93 points, or 0.14%, at 33,245.85, the S&P 500 was down 8.13 points, or 0.19%, at 4,190.99, and the Nasdaq Composite was down 25.82 points, or 0.20%, at 12,613.45. (Reporting by Bansari Mayur Kamdar, Devik Jain, Anisha Sircar and Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)