U.S. stock-index futures sank Sunday after Wall Street’s worst week since January.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures YM00 fell more than 130 points, or 0.4%, late Sunday, while S&P 500 futures ES00 and Nasdaq-100 futures NQ00 posted declines closer to 1%.
Prices of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies also slid over the weekend, with bitcoin BTCUSD just above the $27,000 level, about 60% off its all-time high reached last November. Crude prices CL dipped Sunday as well.
Stocks finished sharply lower Friday. The Dow DJIA dropped 880 points, or 2.7%, to close at 31,392.79; the S&P 500 SPX slid 116.96 points, or 2.9%, to finish at 3,900.86; and the Nasdaq Composite COMP slumped 414.20 points, or 3.5%, to end at 11,340.02.
For the week, the Dow fell 4.6%, the S&P 500 dove 5.1% and the Nasdaq sank 5.6%. It was the biggest weekly loss since January for all three major benchmarks, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Markets fell following renewed inflation worries, as a new report showed hotter-than-expected readings. The consumer-price index on Friday showed U.S. inflation increased 1% in May, well above the 0.7% monthly rise forecast by economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal. The year-over-year rate rose 8.6%, topping the 40-year high of 8.5% seen in March.
“U.S. CPI for May was a nightmare for risk markets,” Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management, wrote in a note Sunday. “The market is now thinking much more about the Fed driving rates sharply higher to get on top of inflation and then having to cut back as growth drops.
That will leave traders and investors “deliberating how much further tightening central banks’ will be able to deliver and, therefore, how much higher yields can go from here. And we all know nothing ever good happens when interest rate volatility spikes in capital markets,” he said.