By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com – The Dow suffered its worst decline of the year on Friday, as a sea of red swept over stocks following mostly disappointing quarterly earnings from corporates and growing worries about aggressive Federal Reserve rate hikes.  

9.81 points) The dropped 2.8% or 2.8% and then fell to 2.6%.

The sector of health care had the lowest performance on the day. This was due to a slowdown in HCA/Intuitive Surgical.

HCA Holdings (NYSE 🙂 dropped 22% following mixed quarter results. The company also cut its full-year guidance due to the effects of rising costs and the pandemic.

Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:) fell more than 14% as its better-than-expected first-quarter results were overshadowed by “the lack of follow-through on the procedure guide and the commentary around a potentially softer U.S. capital pipeline,” Raymond James said as it cut its price target on the stock to $330 from $334.

The Federal Reserve’s expectations of tighter monetary policies after Chairman Jerome Powell’shawkish comments a day before dragged down sentiment on stock markets.

Powell said Wednesday that an increase of 50 basis points was possible for the May meeting. Powell also stated that it was not impossible to back-load more than one fifty basis point increment beyond May’s meeting.

“The market was already anticipating a 50bps hike next month. Going forward, however, against the backdrop of this week’s Fed commentary, an even larger 75bp hike is now on the table,” Stifel said in note.

After briefly reaching its highest point since 2018, the yield lost some of its gains. While the 2-year Treasury yield, which is more sensitive to the Fed’s rate hikes, continued to advance.  

Technology traded in the negative despite the rising rate backdrop, which is the enemy growth stocks. 

Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:), Amazon (NASDAQ:), Microsoft  (NASDAQ:), Apple (NASDAQ:) and Meta (NASDAQ:) were down more than 2%.

After the market collapse, communication services were also a major drag. Verizon Communications (NYSE:) saw its largest drop in sales in over two years. Telecoms giant has lowered its sales estimates for the full year.

Other news: Bed Bath & Beyond Inc (NASDAQ:) jumped more than 6% on reports that the company is fielding interest for its BuyBuy Baby business.