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Market Snapshot: Dow futures drop over 300 points as selling gathers pace after Fed minutes

U.S. stock futures slumped on Thursday, a day after minutes from the Federal Reserve's rate-setting committee indicated its bond buying program was on its last legs. Read More...

U.S. stock futures slumped on Thursday, a day after minutes from the Federal Reserve’s rate-setting committee indicated its bond buying program was on its last legs.

What’s happening

* Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average YM00, -1.05% fell 327 points;

* Futures on the S&P 500 ES00, -1.00% lost 0.9%;

* Futures on the Nasdaq 100 NQ00, -0.86% retreated by 0.8%.

On Wednesday, U.S. stocks suffered their worst single session in a month. The Dow DJIA, -1.08% fell 382 points, the S&P 500 SPX, -1.07% lost 1.1% and the Nasdaq Composite COMP, -0.89% fell 0.9%.

What’s driving markets

Investors continued to be rattled by the release of the Fed minutes, even though its message — that tapering will start this year — was well choreographed in speeches and articles citing insiders ahead of the release.

“While the formula provided could in principle be consistent with a taper decision in September (particularly given the strong July employment report that came after the FOMC meeting), the overall tone of the debate – including multiple references to the delta variant – seem more consistent with a more methodical approach in which the Fed provides a clear signal in September that a taper decision is coming in November. That was and remains our call,” said economists at Evercore ISI.

Also noteworthy was a U.K. study, from the University of Oxford based on real-world data, that showed diminished effectiveness from coronavirus vaccines to the delta variant. After four to five months, the study found that two doses of the vaccine from Pfizer PFE, -2.20% and BioNTech BNTX, -0.62% was as effective as two Oxford-AstraZeneca AZN, +0.15% jabs.

Robinhood Markets HOOD, +6.71% was set to retreat after the online broker’s cautious outlook on the third quarter.

Other markets

The selling was particularly intense in Europe, where miners dived nearly 5% to send the Stoxx Europe 600 SXXP, -2.19% down by 2%.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury TMUBMUSD10Y, 1.227% fell to 1.22%.

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