Us stocks opened lower on the last day of the second quarter as investors rebalanced their portfolios before the end of the difficult first half, Hong Kong's Wande news agency reported.

The s & p 500 index fell nearly 2% shortly after opening, after the index closed virtually unchanged the day before. The Dow Jones Industrial average fell 1.48%, or 458 points, while the NASDAQ Composite Index fell more than 2%. U. S. stocks fell across the board, with all 11 sectors of the S & P 500 down.

The S & P 500 is on track for its worst first-half performance since 1970, amid fears of a recession amid soaring inflation and rapidly rising interest rates. After initially thinking that the inflation of the epidemic was temporary, the Fed and other global central banks have turned to raising interest rates as the most important task in the fight against inflation, even if it means hampering economic growth.

Jeffrey Halley, a senior market analyst at OANDA, said the comments made by Federal Reserve Chairman Powell and ECB president Christine Lagarde at Wednesday's meeting began to affect investors on the last trading day of the quarter, which was a turbulent day.

He said Powell and Lagarde said they would continue to raise interest rates even if their economies slowed to curb inflation. This increases the risk of recession. Meanwhile, institutional investors adjusted their portfolios on the last trading day of the quarter.

Investors are increasingly convinced that the pace of interest rate hikes will trigger a recession. About 90 per cent of investors expect the US to fall into recession by the end of 2023, according to a survey released by Deutsche Bank on Thursday.

Although the S & P 500 has fallen into a bear market (down 20 per cent from its recent high), 72 per cent of investors surveyed expect the S & P to fall to 3300 from about 3800 before rebounding.

The stock market is moving closer to a bear market as the market reacts to rising interest rates and the threat of recession. One reason may be that some investors still think many stocks are overvalued after rising valuations over the past two years.

"despite what has happened, we still haven't found a lot of cheap stocks," said David Donabedian, chief investment officer of CIBC Private Wealth in the US. He added that he thought forecasts for future earnings seasons were too optimistic. "the market needs to be cheaper objectively," he said.

The personal consumption expenditure price index, a broad measure of economic inflation, rose 6.3 per cent in May from a year earlier, unchanged from the previous month. The index is the preferred indicator of price increases for Fed officials and is likely to affect the extent to which they choose to raise interest rates at future policy meetings.

The data also showed that US consumer spending rose 0.2 per cent in May, a slowdown from the previous month, as consumers struggled to cope with high inflation. In the bond market, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 3.020% from 3.091% on Wednesday.