ASX slides lower; Tech darlings weigh down Wall Street

Tesla was one of the heaviest weights on the market after falling 5.3 per cent. The electric-vehicle maker’s stock has been struggling on worries that it will lose sales because of anger at its CEO, Elon Musk, who has been leading efforts to cut spending by the US government. EV rivals, meanwhile, continue to chip away at its business. China’s BYD on Monday announced an ultra-fast charging system that it says is nearly as quick as a petrol fill-up.

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Alphabet sank 2.2 per cent after the owner of Google said it would buy cybersecurity firm Wiz for $US32 billion ($50 billion). It would be the company’s most expensive purchase in its 26-year history, and it could boost the tech giant’s in-house cloud computing amid burgeoning artificial-intelligence growth.

The drop for Big Tech continues a trend that’s taken hold in the market’s recent sell-off: Stocks whose momentum had earlier seemed unstoppable have since dropped sharply following criticism they had simply grown too expensive.

Virtually everyone on Wall Street expects the Fed to hold its main interest rate steady on Wednesday, as it waits for clues about how conditions play out. The job market, for the moment at least, appears relatively stable after the economy closed last year running at a solid rate.

More attention will be on the forecasts the Fed will publish after the meeting, showing where officials expect interest rates, inflation and the economy to head in upcoming years. For now, traders on Wall Street are largely expecting the Fed to deliver two or three cuts to rates by the end of 2025.

with AP

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