The three major U.S. stock indexes in New York opened lower across the board.
On the 27th (U.S. Eastern time) at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened at 49,253.57 and was at 48,972.05 as of 9:35 a.m., down 523.71 points (1.06%) from the previous session.
At the same time, the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 was at 6,850.02, down 59.80 points (0.87%) from the previous session, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq was at 22,618.17, down 262.15 points (1.15%).
There is an assessment that the U.S. producer price index (PPI) topping expectations stoked risk aversion among investors. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said that in Jan., the PPI rose 0.5% from the prior month.
The 0.5% increase exceeds the 0.3% forecast compiled by Dow Jones. A 0.8% month-over-month rise in final demand services prices contributed to the overall index gain.
PPI refers to the expense (wholesale prices) that corporations incur to make products. When the expense of making products rises, corporations eventually raise consumer prices, which in turn leads to an increase in the consumer price index (CPI), a key gauge for interest rate decisions.
Talk of an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble is also stoking investor fear, adding to the headwinds. Shares of Nvidia, considered the leading AI bellwether, were at $180.15, down 2.56% from the previous day.
Elsewhere, shares of major U.S. big techs, including Apple, Microsoft, Meta and Tesla, were broadly weaker. By contrast, shares of Walmart, Netflix and Johnson & Johnson were rising.