By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com — The S&P 500 slipped Wednesday, as tech was pressured by rising Treasury yields after the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s March meeting signaled that central bank members were in favor of stepping up the pace of the monetary policy tightening next month.

36 points fell by 0.11% and 0.5% respectively, while the dropped 1.4%.

The Fed is “well placed to begin the process of reducing the size of the balance sheet as early as after the conclusion of its upcoming meeting in May,” the Fed minutes showed on Wednesday.

According to the plan, about $60 billion would be allowed in Treasury securities and approximately $35 billion agency MBS. This will allow the Fed to reduce its balance sheet of nearly $9 trillion.

Investors digested the idea of the Fed tightening its monetary policy in aggressive fashion at future meetings and the 10-year yield reached 2.6%.

Tech and other growth sectors, such as tech, are becoming less appealing during periods of inflationary rates rising. This has pushed the overall market lower.

Facebook (NASDAQ) was the leader in big tech, falling more than 22% while Alphabet (NASDAQ) and Amazon.com (NASDAQ) were lower.

Nvidia’s 6% drop and Broadcom’s weakness (NASDAQ 🙂 also impacted chip stock performance.

Intel fell less than 1%, however, after the chipmaker said it would end or scale back operations in Russia following the latter’s invasion of Ukraine.

Tesla (NASDAQ:) fell more than 3% as electric vehicle reportedly doesn’t expect to resume production at its Shanghai factory until at least Friday following a Covid-led shutdown.

On the deal making front, JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ:) fell more than 7% a day after the airline’s tabled a $3.6 billion takeover bid for rival Spirit Airlines (NYSE:).

In other news, Tilray (NASDAQ:) bucked the broader trend lower, rising more than 6% after delivering an unexpected profit in the third quarter and announced that its subsidiary Manitoba Harvest’s hemp powders would be available at more than 300 Whole Foods Market locations across the U.S.