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, -0.31% fell 7points, or 0.2%, to 34079
- Futures on the S&P 500 ES00, -0.40% declined 0.4%, or 16 points, to 4374
- Futures on the Nasdaq 100 NQ00, -0.56% fell 0.6%, or 89 points, to 14338
On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.30% tumbled 340 points, or 1%, to 35029, the S&P 500 SPX, -1.89% fell 1% to 4533 and the Nasdaq Composite COMP, -2.72% 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, -21.79% 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, -1.07% fell on Monday to the weakest level in more than a year.
Cryptocurrency developments also were in the spotlight, after bitcoin BTCUSD, -4.71% fell as much as 50% below its record high over the weekend.
