By Yashaswini Swamynathan
REUTERS - Wall Street was near session lows late on Friday morning as Oracle led a decline in tech stocks and financials came under pressure in the wake of Deutsche Bank's mammoth $14 billion fine.
The far bigger-than-expected penalty was levied by the U.S. Department of Justice to settle claims that the German bank missold mortgage-backed securities. Deutsche Bank's U.S.-listed shares were down 9.2 percent.
Dow components Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan fell 1.2 percent each. The S&P 500 financial index dropped 0.98 percent, the steepest among the 10 major S&P sectors.
The KBW Bank index fell 1.25 percent, putting it on track for its biggest weekly decline since the Brexit vote in late June.
"The size of the Deutsche fine is putting pressure on the financials and is combined with the likelihood of the Fed putting off raising rates next week," said Thomas Wilson, senior investment manager at Brinker Capital in Philadelphia.
Traders have all but ruled out the possibility of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates at its meeting that starts next Tuesday.
But, investors will carefully parse the Fed's comments on the recent sluggish economic data and its impact on when the central bank will eventually pull the trigger.
At 10:57 a.m. ET (1457 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 72.62 points, or 0.4 percent, at 18,139.86.
The S&P 500 was down 10.01 points, or 0.47 percent, at 2,137.25.
The Nasdaq Composite was down 14.19 points, or 0.27 percent, at 5,235.50.
Oracle dropped 3.9 percent and pulled down other technology stocks after the company issued a disappointing quarterly profit.
Also weighing was a 0.5 percent drop in Apple, that was set to snap a four-day winning streak, as Asia gave the iPhone 7 a subdued welcome.
Helping limit losses was Intel's 2.5 percent gain after the chipmaker raised its third-quarter revenue forecast.
The CBOE Market Volatility index was up 0.61 percent. The index, commonly called Wall Street's "fear gauge", has fallen only twice this week.
Volatility was likely rise as investors unwind interests in futures and options contracts prior to expiration - a process known as quadruple witching.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 2,033 to 809. On the Nasdaq, 1,531 issues fell and 1,121 advanced.
The S&P 500 index showed three new 52-week highs and no new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 49 new highs and 27 new lows.
(Reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza)
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content
