Friday’s sell off on Wall Street shares extended to Asian and European markets overnight, and then returned to pull Wall Street lower for a third day by the time trading finished early today, Australian time.
But US shares closed above their day’s lows – for example the Nasdaq market was down 1.8% at one stage but closed down 1.2%.
As a result, our market will have yet another weak start to trading today with the share price futures contract showing a fall of 18 points on the ASX 200.
That was after yesterday’s small fall – though the index had been down sharply at the start.
Gold and oil eased as well in offshore trading.
Comex gold in New York lost $US& to $US1,297 an ounce and oil anded at just under $US101 a barrel.
The Aussie dollar eased a touch to trade just under 92.70 US cents in early Asian dealings – after being above 92.90 for much of the night.
The Nasdaq Composite fell 47.97 points, or 1.2%, to 4,079.75.
The tech-dominated index has lost 4.6% over the past three sessions, the steepest three-day loss since November 2011, according to US market reports.
NASDAQ YTD – Posts 3-Day Loss Worst Since 2011
The S&P 500 dropped 20.05 points, or 1.1%, to end at 1,845.04. Financial stocks were among the worst hit. This index has now given up its gains for 2014.
And the Dow lost 166.84 points, or 1.3%, to end at 16,245.87, with Pfizer Inc and American Express Company heading the losers.
Among individual stocks on Monday, Internet stocks such as TripAdvisor and Baidu Inc (the Chinese giant) fell 2.7% and 3.9%, respectively, and added to recent losses.
High-growth or momentum stocks again led the markets lower, especially on the Nasdaq.
Tesla Motors shares dropped 2.2%. Pandora Media, Inc. (the internet music streaming company) saw its shares fall 5%, while shares in Facebook rose and fell during the day and ended up 0.4%.
But the stock is down more than 18% from its highest closing level on March 10.
And Apple shares, which have the heaviest-weighting in both the Nasdaq Composite and the S&P 500, also fell 1.6% and contributed to the day’s losses.
For Australian investors, the sell off in the US (and to a lesser extent in the UK where there’s also been something of a tech and net share rally in the past few months) should have little impact really.
The sell off in New York has been based in social media and big cap tech stocks (Facebook, Tencent , the Chinese net group, Netflix, Pandora, Tesla, Apple, Microsoft and Twitter). Australia doesn’t have these stocks, or their local clones on the ASX so that should be helping ease the pressures of the sell off (which we saw on Monday?).
