By Liz Moyer
Investing.com -- Nasdaq pared earlier losses but shares of Apple, Microsoft and chip companies Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia were still down.
Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) shares fell 2%, while Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) was down 1.3%. Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ:AMD) fell 2.6%, and NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) was down 2.3%.
Tech stocks are weaker after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank would do whatever it took to tame inflation, even at the risk of a recession. Rising interest rates hit growth stocks like tech. Expectations for another big rate hike in September are growing. The Fed raised its benchmark rate by 0.75 percentage points in each of June and July.
The weakness was across the sector, with the Nasdaq down 1% in late morning trading. Crowdstrike Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:CRWD) shares were down 1.4%, while shares of Okta Inc (NASDAQ:OKTA) fell 3.5%. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) shares fell 1%, too.
The yield on the two-year Treasury, which is sensitive to rate expectations, briefly reached a multi-year high, and the gap between it and the 10-year yield was inverted, which can be viewed as a predictor of a recession.
Apple, the biggest market cap in the Nasdaq, fell more than 3% on Friday.