Wall Street is expected to open lower on Thursday in anticipation of a worldwide economic slowdown brought on by aggressive central bank rate hikes and the possibility of a spillover from the upheaval in the UK markets.
In addition, the Dow and S&P 500 e-minis declined for the seventh time in eight sessions, while premarket trading losses ranged from 1.6% to 2.7% for megacap growth companies including Tesla Inc., Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Microsoft Corp.
Moreover, the serenity that resulted from the Bank of England’s decision to purchase long-dated government assets on Wednesday to ease the market turbulence brought on by the government’s new economic strategy was fleeting.
Furthermore, bond prices and the value of the pound both declined, as the sell-off in British assets spread to even safe-haven U.S. Treasuries and highly rated German bonds.
Also, the S&P 500 registered its first rise in seven sessions during the prior session. According to Datastream, the benchmark index was last valued at $31.2 trillion, having lost nearly $9.1 trillion in market value this year.
The dividend yield of the S&P 500, which most recently stood at roughly 1.8%, is now dwarfed by the yields on many Treasuries, which are thought to be almost risk-free if held to maturity.
Loretta Mester, the president of the Federal Reserve’s Cleveland branch, echoed the pledges made this week by other central bank officials to continue raising interest rates in order to control inflation in her remarks.
In spite of the Fed’s sharp interest rate rises and decreasing demand, the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly decreased last week to 193,000, according to the most recent data, demonstrating the U.S. labor market’s resilience.
At 8:37 a.m. ET at Wall Street, the S&P 500 was down 55 points, or 1.47%, the Nasdaq 100 was down 207.75 points, or 1.8%, and the Dow was down 364 points, or 1.22%.
