New York: Fears of aggressive interest rate hikes by a Federal Reserve keen to break the back of the worst US inflation in 40 years led to an investor exodus from equities and even safe-haven assets like gold, as Wall Street slumped for the third week in a row.

The S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Nasdaq Composite all finished Friday's trade down by an average of 2.7 percent. Their average weekly loss was 2.8 percent, adding to a net loss of 2.6 percent during the preceding two weeks.

The Federal Reserve is planning some of its most aggressive monetary tightening ever to put the brakes on price pressures that have been raging since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has squeezed global supplies of oil, grains, and specialty metals. Stocks have been in a downtrend for most of April.

The sell-off on Wall Street intensified this week after a number of Federal Reserve officials, including James Bullard and Mary Daly, the heads of the central bank's St. Louis and San Francisco divisions, suggested that a 50-basis-point, or half-percentage-point, hike be implemented at the central bank's upcoming policy meeting on May 4-5. At its previous interest rate hike in March, the Federal Reserve approved only a 25-basis-point, or quarter-point, increase.

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