NEW YORK, Sept 21 — Nasdaq led declines in key Wall Street indexes today as a jump in Treasury yields knocked down growth stocks after the Federal Reserve signaled that another rate hike was in the offing this year.

Rate-sensitive stocks including Tesla, Meta Platforms, Amazon.com, Alphabet, and Nvidia fell between 1.5 per cent and 3.0 per cent as the two-year and 10-year Treasury yields scaled multi-year highs.

Semiconductor firm Broadcom slid 3.9 per cent on report Alphabet-owned Google’s executives discussed dropping the company as a supplier of artificial intelligence chips as early as 2027.

The report also said Google had been working to replace Broadcom as the supplier for networking chips used in its data centres with Marvell Technology which rose 0.9 per cent.

The Philadelphia chip index lost 1.1 per cent.

The US central bank delivered a widely anticipated pause yesterday and revised economic projections higher with warnings that the battle against inflation was far from over, prompting a weak session for Wall Street.

The benchmark interest rate could be hiked one more time in 2023 to a peak range of 5.50 per cent-5.75 per cent, while monetary policy could stay tighter than was expected through 2024, the Fed’s updated quarterly projections showed.

"Our economists were expecting cuts in each of the four quarters of next year, but now they think the first cut will be delayed until sometime in the second quarter,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research in New York

Adding to rate jitters, US jobless claims unexpectedly fell last week, while the Philadelphia Fed’s business conditions index reading showed a worse-than-expected drop in September, fuelling recession concerns.

"With interest rates like that and with other measures of the economy showing weaker-than-expected readings, the increasing concern is that we are headed for a recession,” Stovall added.

The CBOE volatility index, known as Wall Street’s "fear gauge”, hit its highest level in nearly one month, reflecting rising investor anxiety.

Traders’ bets on the benchmark rate remaining unchanged in November and December stood at 72 per cent and 53 per cent, respectively, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.

Meanwhile, weak performance of recent listings after their debut highs has dampened hopes of a likely revival in the initial public offering market amid high interest rates and broader market declines.

Marketing automation firm Klaviyo’s shares fell 1.3 per cent, after closing well below their intra-day debut high yesterday at US$32.76 (RM153).

Instacart fell 5.1 per cent briefly slipping below its IPO price of US$30 per share, while Arm Holdings shed 3.4 per cent to US$51.1, nearing its IPO price of US$51 per share.

At 9.50am ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 161.34 points, or 0.47 per cent, at 34,279.54, the S&P 500 was down 37.92 points, or 0.86 per cent, at 4,364.28, and the Nasdaq Composite was down 163.88 points, or 1.22 per cent, at 13,305.25.

FedEx added 5.8 per cent after surprising investors with a big quarterly profit beat.

Fox Corp and News Corp added 1.7 per cent and 0.4 per cent, respectively, after Rupert Murdoch stepped down as the chairman of both firms.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 7.06-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 3.86-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P index recorded two new 52-week highs and 16 new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded seven new highs and 207 new lows. — Reuters