S&P 500 opens deep in the negative territory, closes in on 3,900

• Wall Street's main indexes started the day sharply lower.
• Technology shares post heavy losses after the opening bell.
• All major S&P 500 sectors trade in the negative territory.

Major equity indexes in the US opened in the red on Wednesday despite the upbeat US data. As of writing, the S&P 500 was down 0.8% on the day at 2,901, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was losing 0.45% at 31,376 and the Nasdaq Composite was falling 0.9% at 13,648.

Earlier in the day, the data published by the US Census Bureau revealed that Retail Sales in January increased by 5.3% to $568.2 billion. Although this reading surpassed the market expectation for an increase of 1% by a wide margin, it failed to help market sentiment improve.

All major sectors of the S&P 500 trade in the negative territory after the opening bell. The Materials Index and the Technology Index both lose around 1% as the worst performers in the early trade.

S&P 500 chart (daily)