Declines dominate again but Birmingham stocks manage gains

Declines dominate again but Birmingham stocks manage gains

The negative percentages were out in full force again Thursday on our Birmingham and Alabama Stock Report.

Only five stocks saw gains, including Warrior Met Coal, which topped the chart with a 1.8% bump.

Birmingham-based ProAssurance and Encompass Health managed gains, too, of .8% and .4%, respectively.

Eleven stocks lost at least 2%. Medical Properties Trust propped up the table with a 8.4% loss that sunk it to a 52-week low for the second straight day. It now sits at $5.31 a share. Vulcan Materials and Nucor dropped 3.4% and 2.5%, respectively.

Overall, Wall Street fell sharply Thursday in an ugly day for stocks worldwide on expectations that U.S. interest rates will stay high well into next year.

The S&P 500 lost 1.6% for its worst day since March. That followed a drop of 0.9% from Wednesday after the Federal Reserve indicated it may cut interest rates next year by just half of what it had earlier predicted. The Fed has already hiked its main interest rate to levels unseen since 2001, which helps slow inflation but at the cost of hurting investment prices.