Filed under: Before the bell, Major movement, International markets, Earnings reports, Apple Inc (AAPL), Market matters, Johnson and Johnson (JNJ), Bank of America (BAC), duPont(E.I.)deNemours (DD), Wachovia Corp (WB), Economic data, Oil, S and P 500, DJIA, Federal Reserve

While stock futures are not as low as earlier this morning, they’re still pointing to one of the biggest decline days, if not the biggest, since 2000 as Wall Street looks set to join the global market sell-off stemming from fears over a U.S. recession and possible global slowdown.

S&P 500 futures were down over 4% (~55 points), the Nasdaq indicated a similar decline with a 70 points drop, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 480 points. If today is as bad as indicated, U.S. stocks may enter bear-market territory - a loss of over 20% from highs. After the drops from last week, the S&P 500 is nearly 16% below 2007 highs, and the Nasdaq Composite is down about 18%.

Overseas, markets continued the declines from Monday, when U.S. markets were closed. The steep sell-off drove 43 benchmarks into bear market, as tracked by bloomberg.

Weighing on futures were steep selloffs in overseas markets, which plunged Monday amid fears that the U.S. slowdown would spill over to the global economy. In Asia stocks continued plunging with Japan’s Nikkei 225 index nose-diving 5.7% - its biggest percentage drop in nearly 10 years, a day after falling 3.9%. Australia’s benchmark index sank 7.1%, the market’s steepest one-day slide in nearly 20 years. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index, finished down 8.7% after declining 5.5% Monday. In China, the Shanghai Composite index lost 7.2%.

Yet, in Europe, shares seemed to have put on the brakes and recover somewhat from earlier lows as rate-cut hopes by central banks fueled markets. After London’s FTSE 100 shed 5.5% Monday and Frankfurt’s Dax-30 lost 7.2% of its value, this morning they’re off 0.7% and 2.5% respectively.

Continue reading Before the bell: Wall Street set to join international sell-off

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 10:40 am and is filed under Stocks Money News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.