US markets end lower following report of Biden eyeing capital gains tax hike

23 Apr 2021 Evaluate

The US markets ended lower on Thursday following private report said that President Joe Biden plans to propose nearly doubling the capital gains tax rate for wealthy individuals to fund spending on child care and education. Biden is planning a capital gains tax hike to as high as 43.4% for wealthy Americans. The proposal would hike the capital gains rate to 39.6% for those earning $1 million or more, up from 20% currently. The report raised concerns the Biden administration's tax policies could halt the nearly persistent advance by the markets throughout the past year. Further, growth stocks, which could come under selling pressure on higher capital gains taxes, led the intraday decline with shares of Tesla and Amazon falling 3.3% and 1.6% respectively. The iShares S&P 500 Growth ETF fell 1%, more than its value counterpart.

On the economic data front, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released a report showing another steep drop in US existing home sales in the month of March. NAR said existing home sales tumbled by 3.7 percent to an annual rate of 6.01 million in March after plunging by 6.3 percent to a revised rate of 6.24 million in February. Street had expected existing home sales to dip by 0.5 percent to a rate of 6.19 million from the 6.22 million originally reported for the previous month. Meanwhile, Labor Department report unexpectedly showing a continued decline in initial jobless claims in the week ended April 17. The report said initial jobless claims fell to 547,000, a decrease of 39,000 from the previous week's revised level of 586,000. The continued drop came as a surprise to street, who had expected jobless claims to rebound to 617,000 from the 576,000 originally reported for the previous month. With the unexpected decrease, jobless claims slid to their lowest level since hitting 256,000 in the week ended March 14, 2020.

Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 321.41 points or 0.94 percent to 33,815.9, Nasdaq dropped 131.8 points or 0.94 percent to 13,818.41 and S&P 500 was down by 38.44 points or 0.92 percent to 4,134.98.

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