Wall Street: S&P 500, Nasdaq end 8-day winning streak ahead of Fed minutes

The benchmark US stock market indices settled in the red as the Wall Street braced for the release of Federal Reserve's July monetary policy review meeting minutes on Wednesday, August 21.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite and the broader S&P 500 snapped their eight-day winning streak. Another day of gain would have marked S&P 500's longest rally since 2004.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average also recorded a decline – its first in the last six trading sessions. The index shed 0.15% or 61.56 points to settle at 40,834.97.

The S&P 500 declined 0.2% to 5,597.12, whereas the Nasdaq Composite slid 0.33% to 17,816.94. Despite the day's decline, both the indices are up 1% month-on-month.

Among megacaps, Nvidia Corp led the losses, declining 2.12% to settle at $127.25 per share. The stock had rallied by around 25% in the preceding six days.

Bank of America Corp was also among the major losers, as the stock declined by 2.47% after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc offloaded more shares in the company. It ended the day's trade at $38.69.

Meanwhile, Palo Alto Networks was among the top gainers, rallying by 7.18% to $368.01 per share on bullish outlook. Netflix Inc also jumped 1.45% to clock its record high of $698.54.

Notably, the US stock market witnessed one of its sharpest sell-offs in the first week of August, after data released by the US government showed unemployment rising by 4.3% in July, the sharpest since October 2021. This led to a section of Wall Street investors believing that the Fed might have been already late in slashing the interest rates to stimulate economic growth.

Data related to the weekly unemployment filings, released on Thursday, also eased the market sentiment as the weekly jobless claims dropped to 227,000, lower than the Reuters' estimate of 235,000.