US stock futures fall after Wall Street’s worst week since January
US stock index futures fell on Sunday after Wall Street’s worst week since January.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures YM00,
fell around 300 points, or 1%, at midnight Eastern, while the S&P 500 futures ES00,
and Nasdaq-100 futures NQ00,
posted even steeper declines.
Prices of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies also fell over the weekend, with bitcoin BTCUSD,
falls below the $ 26,000 level to the lowest point in 18 months, and more than 60% of its record high reached in November last year. Oil prices CL.1,
dipped Sunday too.
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The shares ended sharply on Friday. Dow DJIA,
fell 880 points, or 2.7%, to close at 31,392.79; S&P 500 SPX,
dropped 116.96 points, or 2.9%, to finish at 3,900.86; and Nasdaq Composite COMP,
fell 414.20 points, or 3.5%, and ended at 11,340.02.
For the week, the Dow index fell 4.6%, the S&P 500 index 5.1% and the Nasdaq fell 5.6%. It was the largest weekly loss since January for all three major benchmarks, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Read: Shares fall again as hot inflation reads trigger shock waves in the market: What investors need to know
Markets fell after renewed inflation concerns, as a new report showed warmer-than-expected measurements. The consumer price index on Friday showed that US inflation rose by 1% in May, well above the 0.7% monthly growth estimated by economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal. The year-over-year rate rose 8.6%, topping the 40-year high of 8.5% seen in March.
Federal Reserve decision-makers are set to meet this week, and are expected to raise interest rates by 50 basis points, although some economists believe that after Friday’s CPI report, there may be support for a more aggressive 75-basis point increase.
See also: “Pigeons do not exist at FOMC right now”: Economists expect hawkish Fed meeting this week
“The US CPI for May was a nightmare for the risk markets,” Stephen Innes, managing partner of SPI Asset Management, wrote in a note on Sunday. “The market is now thinking much more about the Fed pushing up interest rates sharply to get to the top of inflation and then having to cut back as growth falls.
It will allow traders and investors to “consider how much further tightening central banks will be able to deliver, and thus how much higher returns can go from here. And we all know that nothing good happens when interest rate volatility increases in capital markets,” he said.
