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U.S. stock futures fell Monday morning, continuing the downtrend that has pressured stocks this year.
What’s happening
-
Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average
YM00,
-0.41%
fell 7points, or 0.2%, to 34079 -
Futures on the S&P 500
ES00,
-0.52%
declined 0.4%, or 16 points, to 4374 -
Futures on the Nasdaq 100
NQ00,
-0.74%
fell 0.6%, or 89 points, to 14338
On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
tumbled 340 points, or 1%, to 35029, the S&P 500
SPX,
fell 1% to 4533 and the Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
lost 1.2% to 14340. This year, the S&P 500 has dropped 8%.
What’s driving markets
Early strength in U.S. stock futures on Sunday night quickly melted away. There wasn’t much in the way of new information filtering into markets 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.
Cryptocurrency developments also were in the spotlight, after bitcoin
BTCUSD,
fell as much as 50% below its record high over the weekend.
