US STOCKS-Indexes end lower, Nasdaq, S&P 500 post 3rd week of declines

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* Tesla rises after PT hikes ahead of "Battery Day"

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By Caroline Valetkevitch
Sept 18 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell on Friday as technology
shares sold off for a third day in a row, while the S&P 500 and
Nasdaq posted a third straight week of declines.
It was the first such weekly streak for the Nasdaq since
August 2019.
Apple Inc AAPL.O , Microsoft Corp MSFT.O , Amazon.com Inc
AMZN.O and Alphabet Inc, GOOGL.O which helped to fuel the
rally off the March lows, were among the biggest drags on the
S&P 500 and Nasdaq.
Friday marked the quarterly expiration of U.S. stock
options, stock index futures and index option contracts, known
as "quadruple witching." The expirations tend to bring about
increased trading volume at the market close and feed into
market volatility. Strategists said investors appeared to be continuing a
recent rotation out of high-flying tech-related stocks and into
other sectors.
"It looks to be sentiment driven and, to some extent, it
appears to be rotational to us," said Rob Haworth, senior
investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Seattle.
"We're not sure this really indicates there's a problem with
economic growth, but rather, it's some profit-taking, some
adjustment and rotation" between sectors, he said. "You're
moving from the biggest weights in the market to the smallest
weights."
The S&P materials .SPLRCM is the best-performing sector so
far this month, while heavily weighted S&P technology is the
worst.
Unofficially, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell
249 points, or 0.89%, to 27,652.98, the S&P 500 .SPX lost
37.89 points, or 1.13%, to 3,319.12 and the Nasdaq Composite
.IXIC dropped 118.00 points, or 1.08%, to 10,792.28.
Investors kept a close eye on rising coronavirus cases
overseas. European countries from Denmark to Greece announced
new restrictions on Friday to curb surging coronavirus
infections in some of their largest cities, while Britain was
reported to be considering a new national lockdown. Tesla rose as two analysts raised their price targets on the
electric carmaker's shares ahead of its highly anticipated
"Battery Day" event next week.