Wall Street experienced a decline as it opened on Tuesday, following a mixed set of earnings reports from major banks. The S&P 500 dipped 0.3%, remaining within 0.6% of its two-year-old all-time high. The Dow dropped by 54 points, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% lower. Morgan Stanley faced a significant setback due to a legal matter and a special assessment, resulting in a substantial reduction of over half a billion dollars in its pretax earnings. Conversely, Goldman Sachs saw an increase after surpassing Wall Street’s forecasts. The bond market’s rise in Treasury yields added pressure to the stock market, reflecting a trend of weakness in global indexes.
Ahead of the opening on Tuesday, Wall Street headed lower after the holiday weekend, with Hong Kong’s benchmark falling over 2%. Concerns over China’s outlook cast a shadow over regional markets. U.S. markets were closed on Monday, leaving investors without overnight trading cues. S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were 0.3% and 0.2% lower, respectively.
Despite months of pushing toward record highs, with the S&P 500 near its peak, investors are becoming more cautious about the Federal Reserve’s potential interest rate cuts. The anticipation of multiple rate cuts in 2024 is met with skepticism, as uncertainties surrounding global events may influence the central bank’s decisions.
Analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya of Swissquote Bank expressed a belief that central banks may not cut interest rates in the first quarter unless a severe crisis occurs. Traders, however, have been betting on a more aggressive rate-cutting strategy than the Fed has hinted at, with the central bank even considering raising rates if inflation fails to align with its target.
Microsoft rose before the bell, surpassing Apple as the world’s most valuable publicly-traded company with a market capitalization of $2.89 trillion.
In Europe, Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC40 each declined by 0.3%, while Britain’s FTSE 100 slipped by 0.2%. Asian trading saw Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index drop 0.8%, breaking a New Year’s winning streak. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 1.9%, and the Shanghai Composite recovered from early losses, adding 0.3%.
Investors were selling stocks of technology and property companies in Hong Kong, with Meituan and Tencent experiencing declines. Financially troubled property developer China Garden Holding lost 5.6%, and Sino-Ocean Group Holding plunged 9.5%.
China is expected to release an update on its economy, with forecasts indicating annual growth at 5.3% in the last quarter, up from 4.9% in July-September. IMF head Kristalina Georgieva warned of a potential significant decline in growth rates for China unless reforms are enacted to boost spending.
In other markets, U.S. crude oil picked up 34 cents to $73.02, and Brent crude climbed 68 cents to $78.83 per barrel. The euro fell to $1.0885 from $1.0952.
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