U.S. stocks ended sharply lower Thursday, extending losses ahead of the closing bell as Nvidia Corp.’s post-earnings pop faded and the U.S. dollar strengthened a day ahead of an eagerly awaited speech by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

Powell is scheduled to speak Friday morning at the Kansas City Fed’s Jackson Hole Economic Symposium. The event, an annual highlight of the central bank’s summer calendar, got underway Thursday.

RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das cautioned that headline inflation is expected, to harden significantly in July-August, driven by the spike in tomato and other vegetable prices. The majority of the members of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) expressed caution on the pick-up in retail inflation in the near term, as shown in the minutes of the monetary policy meeting held on August 8-10.

Asian stocks fell after a selloff on Wall Street while Treasury yields stabilized after further upward pressure as traders await Jerome Powell’s speech for clues on the interest-rate outlook.

Nifty opened higher on August 24 but soon ran into profit-taking to end in the negative after three days of gains. At close, Nifty was down 0.29% or 57.3 points at 19386.7. Nifty failed to build on the gains of three days and the street took the positive developments of Aug 23 as an opportunity to take profits. Nifty could now remain in the 19253-19580 band.

Indian markets could open lower, in line with mostly lower Asian markets today and sharply lower US markets on August 24 Listen to the D-Street Details with Devarsh Vakil