Wall Street falls on Apple ruling, inflation

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The Dow and the S&P 500 fell for the fifth straight session Friday, marking Wall Street's longest losing streak in more than six months.

The Dow fell 271 points. The S&P 500 was down 34. The Nasdaq lost 132.

For the week: the S&P 500 was down 1.7 percent

Wall Street had another red-hot inflation number to digest. Producer prices surged in August with the 12-month gain in prices now the largest in nearly 11 years. Much of the gain is tied to supply disruptions, which means companies are unable to keep up with demand, and pushing the price gains onto consumers.

That's leading to an uncertain future for investors, and that’s prompting them to sell, says Jimmy Chang, chief investment officer at the Rockefeller Global Family Office.

“We saw the Atlanta Fed GDP's new model has brought down the forecast for the current quarter's growth from 6.2 percent that was forecasted in mid August down to now 3.7 percent. But on the other hand, people are also trying to decide, does the weaker data mean that the Fed may hold off announcing tapering?”

Meanwhile, it was a busy day for legal news on the corporate front.

In what is viewed as a mixed verdict, a Federal judge ruled that Apple must allow app developers, like "Fortnite" creator Epic Games, a way for their customers to make in-app purchases without using the App Store's payment system, which currently takes a 15 to 30 percent cut. And though the judge stopped short of calling Apple a monopolist, she did say Apple violated California's competition laws. Shares of Apple were down more than 3 percent. Epic Games, which is a privately held company, vowed to keep up the legal challenge. Shares of popular apps like Spotify, which have sided with Epic in the legal battle, rallied on the verdict.

In another legal fight, food-delivery companies DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats sued the city of New York in federal court over legislation that would permanently cap how much the food-delivery apps can charge restaurants for using their platforms. Shares of DoorDash ended the day higher. But Uber was down more than a full percent.