U.S. stock benchmarks were under pressure early Monday, falling sharply as the downtrend that has pressured stocks this year continues apace.
Investors are watching for an important two-day meeting of the Federal Reserve, the first of the year, that is set to kick off on Tuesday.
What’s happening
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-1.79%
fell 688 points, or 2%, to 33,586. - The S&P 500 index
SPX,
-2.32%
declined 2%, or 101 points, to 4,299, trading handily below the level that qualifies as a correction at 4,316.90. - The Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP,
-2.74%
was falling 2.2%, or 305 points, to 13,456.
On Friday, major indexes recorded their biggest weekly drops since 2020.
What’s driving markets
Markets were in free fall early Monday, with early strength in U.S. stock futures on Sunday night giving way to persistent uncertainty and angst, ahead of Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee decision and a wave of earnings reports.
“Uncertainty reigns following last week’s sell-off and ahead of an extremely busy agenda this week,” said Pierre Veyret, technical analyst at ActivTrades.
The 22% plunge in Netflix
NFLX,
shares on Friday added to investor concerns about corporate earnings. “A disappointing start to the earnings season is not helping, despite a superficially impressive EPS beat rate of 77% so far,” said Ian Williams, strategist at U.K. broker Peel Hunt.
The political environment also is a question mark with U.S. and European diplomats meeting on how they can respond to the threat posed by Russia to Ukraine. The Russian ruble
RUBUSD,
fell on Monday to the weakest level in more than a year.
Read: How a Russian invasion of Ukraine could trigger market shock waves
Cryptocurrency developments also were in the spotlight, after bitcoin
BTCUSD,
fell as much as 50% below its record high over the weekend.
Source: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-stock-futures-return-to-losing-ways-with-big-fed-decision-earnings-wave-on-tap-11643021079?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo