Monday was a volatile trading day in the US, with stocks going up and down before the Federal Reserve’s two-day policy meeting later this week.
At last check, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 30 points, or 0.1%, but it was still well above its earlier low of 263 points. The 30-stock index went up and down, and at its highest point, it was up nearly 130 points. The last drops for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were 0.1% and 0.2%.
Yields went up because the Fed is likely to decide to raise its benchmark rate by another 75 basis points later this week to stop inflation. The 10-year Treasury yield went above 3.51%, which was its highest level in 11 years. Before the next reporting season starts in October, investors are also looking for clues about how companies will do financially.
After thinking for a short time over the summer that the Fed might be done with its aggressive tightening campaign, investors have been selling stocks again out of fear that the central bank will go too far and push the economy into a recession.
European markets provisionally higher
Earlier in the day, European market closing was temporarily higher, a rebound following a week in which equities fell across the board.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 fell 2.89 percent last week as investors evaluated concerns about the health of the economy, rising inflation rates, and the approaching monetary policy meeting of the U.S. Federal Reserve.
By Monday afternoon, the main European markets were showing signs of improvement. Germany’s DAX concluded the day up 0.7%, France’s CAC 40 ended unchanged, and Italy’s FTSE MIB closed up 0.3%. The IBEX 35 concluded the day up 0.3% as well.
The FTSE 100 was closed on Monday in observance of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, which began at 11 a.m. London time.
Crypto fell ahead of FED’s decision
Most of the cryptocurrency market is trading in the red at the start of the week. This is mostly because the US Federal Reserve Bank is about to announce that it will raise interest rates.
CryptoRank, a website that collects information about cryptocurrency prices, shows that all of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap have lost between 6% and 11% of their value in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin (BTC), the market leader, fell about 8% and is now worth about $18,600.
Also, Ethereum (ETH), the second largest cryptocurrency, fell 11% on the day and is now trading at around $1,290. The current price of ETH is also down 26.1% from its one-month high price, which was around $1,800 in the week before the Merge.
At the time of writing, data shows that BNB, XRP, ADA, SOL, and DOGE have all dropped by about 7%, 11%, 10%, 8%, and 8.5% respectively.
