Investing.com - U.S. stocks opened lower on Friday, as upbeat U.S. inflation data added to expectations for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates sooner than anticipated, while markets still awaited a U.S. consumer sentiment report.
During early U.S. trade, the Dow 30 dropped 0.54%, the S&P 500 declined 0.56%, while the Nasdaq retreated 0.75%.
Official data showed that U.S. producer price inflation rose 0.5% in March, exceeding expectations for a 0.1% gain, after a 0.1% fall the previous month.
Core producer price inflation, which excludes food, energy and trade, advanced 0.6% last month, compared to expectations for a 0.2% rise, after a 0.2% decline in February.
The report came a day after the Labor Department reported that the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits in the week ending April 4 fell by 30,000 to a seasonally adjusted 300,000 from the previous week’s upwardly revised total of 332,000.
Continuing jobless claims declined to 2.77 million, the lowest since January 2008.
JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) dove 4.91% after the U.S. lender reported first-quarter income of $1.28 a share, below expectations of $1.40 a share. Revenue fell to $22.99 billion, well below the $24.53 billion expected by analysts.
In the same sector, Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) reported a better-than-projected rise in first-quarter net profit, but shares still tumbled 1.70% at the open of the U.S. trading session.
General Motors (NYSE:GM) tumbled 1.23% after saying it anticipates taking a first-quarter charge of $1.3 billion primarily for the cost of recall-related repairs that may lead to the automaker’s first quarterly loss in more than four years.
Adding to losses, Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA) saw shares slide 0.74% following reports the company hired a Best Buy executive for the role of chief financial officer, in a move to turn around the struggling social games developer by focusing on mobile titles.
Elsewhere, Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) fell 0.26% and Juniper Networks (NYSE:JNPR) shed 0.34% after the two companies said some of their networking products are susceptible to the Heartbleed Web-security flaw.
The encryption bug, which was recently discovered by researchers at Google, has prompted companies and government agencies to seek fixes to block hackers from gaining access to user names, passwords and other sensitive information.
Across the Atlantic, European stock markets were sharply lower. The DJ Euro Stoxx 50 tumbled 1.72%, France’s CAC 40 plummeted 1.75%, Germany's DAX plunged 1.94%, while Britain's FTSE 100 lost 1.49%.
During the Asian trading session, Hong Kong's Hang Seng retreated 0.79%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 plunged 2.38%.
Later in the day, the U.S. was to release the preliminary report on the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index.