NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly everything on Wall Street is tumbling Monday as fear about a slowing U.S. economy worsens and sets off another sell-off for financial markets around the world.
The S&P 500 was down by 3.1% in morning trading and on track for its worst day in nearly two years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1,092 points, or 2.7%, as of 10:40 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite slid 3.6%.
The drops were just the latest in a sell-off that swept the Earth. Japan’s Nikkei 225 helped start Monday by plunging 12.4% for its worst day since the Black Monday crash of 1987.
It was the first chance for traders in Tokyo to react to Friday’s report showing U.S. employers slowed their hiring last month by much more than economists expected. That was the latest piece of data on the U.S. economy to come in weaker than expected, and it’s all raised fear the Federal Reserve has pressed the brakes on the U.S. economy by too much for too long through high interest rates in hopes of stifling inflation.
Losses elsewhere in the world were nearly as neck-snapping. South Korea’s Kospi index careened 8.8% lower, stock markets across Europe sank more than 2% and bitcoin dropped 7%.
Even gold, which has a reputation for offering safety during tumultuous times, slipped 1.7%.
That’s in part because traders are wondering if the damage has been so severe that the Federal Reserve will have to cut interest rates in an emergency meeting, before its next scheduled decision on Sept. 18. The yield on the two-year Treasury, which closely tracks expectations for the Fed, briefly dropped below 3.70% during the morning from 3.88% late Friday and from 5% in April. It later recovered and pulled back to 3.88%.
“The Fed could ride in on a white horse to save the day with a big rate cut, but the case for an inter-meeting cut seems flimsy,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. “Those are usually reserved for emergencies, like COVID, and an unemployment rate of 4.3% doesn’t really seem like an emergency.”
“The Fed could respond by stopping” the shrinking of its holdings of Treasurys and other bonds, he said. “That could at least by a symbolic action that they’re not blind to what’s going on.”
Of course, the U.S. economy is still growing, and a recession is far from a certainty. The Fed has been clear about the tightrope it began walking when it started hiking rates sharply in March 2022: Being too aggressive would choke the economy, but going too soft would give inflation more oxygen and hurt everyone.
Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle sees a higher chance of a recession within the next 12 months following Friday’s jobs report. But he still sees only a 25% probability of that, up from 15%, in part “because the data look fine overall” and he does not “see major financial imbalances.”
Some of Wall Street’s recent declines may simply be air coming out of a stock market that romped to dozens of all-time highs this year, in part on a frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology and hopes for coming cuts to interest rates. Critics have been saying for a while that the stock market looked expensive after prices rose faster than corporate profits.
“Markets tend to move higher like they’re climbing stairs, and they go down like they’re falling out a window,” according to JJ Kinahan, CEO of IG North America, who chalks much of the recent worries to euphoria around AI subsiding amid “a market that was ahead of itself.”
U.S. stocks briefly pared their losses a bit Monday after a report said growth for U.S. services businesses was a touch stronger than expected. Growth was led by businesses in the arts, entertainment and recreation businesses, along with accommodations and food services, according to the Institute for Supply Management. Treasury yields also pared their drops following the better-than-expected data.
Still, stocks of companies whose profits are most closely tied to the economy’s strength took heavy losses on the fears about a slowdown. The small companies in the Russell 2000 index dropped 4.3%, further dousing what had been a revival for it and other beaten-down areas of the market.
Making things worse for Wall Street, Big Tech stocks also tumbled sharply as the market’s most popular trade for much of this year continued to unravel. Apple, Nvidia and a handful of other Big Tech stocks known as the “ Magnificent Seven ” had propelled the S&P 500 to records this year, even as high interest rates weighed down much of the rest of the stock market.
But Big Tech’s momentum turned last month on worries investors had taken their prices too high and expectations for future growth are becoming too difficult to meet. A set of underwhelming profit reports that began with updates from Tesla and Alphabet added to the pessimism and accelerated the declines.
Apple fell 5.1% Monday after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that it had slashed its ownership stake in the iPhone maker.
Nvidia, the chip company that’s become the poster child of Wall Street’s AI bonanza, fell even more, 7.7%. Analysts cut their profit forecasts over the weekend for the company after a report from The Information said Nvidia’s new AI chip is delayed. It has trimmed its gain for the year to 100% from 170% in the middle of June.
Because the Magnificent Seven companies have grown to be the market’s biggest by market value, the movements for their stocks carry much more weight on the S&P 500 and other indexes.
Worries outside corporate profits, interest rates and the economy are also weighing on the market. The Israel-Hamas war may be worsening, which beyond its human toll could also cause sharp swings for the price of oil. That’s adding to broader worries about potential hotspots around the world, while upcoming U.S. elections could further scramble things.
Wall Street has been concerned about how policies coming out of November could impact markets, but the sharp swings for stock prices could also affect the election itself.
The market turmoil and concerns about a weakening economy are likely to scramble a presidential race that has so far been focused mostly on immigration and inflation.
The threat of a recession is likely to put Vice President Kamala Harris on the defensive. But slower growth could also further reduce inflation and force former President Donald Trump to pivot from his current focus on higher prices to outlining ways to revive the economy.
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