U.S. Stock Futures and Global Markets Fall
October 30 2020 - 4:54AM
Dow Jones News
By Xie Yu and Jem Bartholomew
U.S. stock futures fell alongside international shares,
suggesting American markets could come under fresh pressure when
they open later Friday.
Markets have grown more volatile in recent sessions, ahead of
next week's American presidential election and as investor concerns
have built that increases in Covid-19 cases in Europe and the U.S.
will prompt restrictions that could curb economic growth.
On Thursday, major U.S. indexes advanced, with the Dow Jones
Industrial Average gaining 0.5% to snap a four-session losing
streak. Still, ahead of Friday's trading the Dow, the S&P 500
and the Nasdaq Composite are still on course for sharp weekly
losses.
By midafternoon in Hong Kong, S&P 500 futures were 1.8%
lower. Stock indexes in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Shanghai
fell between 1.5% and 2.6%. Australia's benchmark S&P/ASX 200
shed 0.6%.
Prices for U.S. government debt rose, pushing the yield on the
10-year U.S. Treasury down 0.01 percentage point to 0.82%. In
commodity markets, Brent crude, the global benchmark, dropped about
1% to $37.85 a barrel.
In Europe, the Stoxx Europe 600 fell 0.8% at the open, Germany's
DAX dropped 1.1% and France's CAC 40 dipped 0.8% as markets
digested fresh coronavirus lockdowns that are attributable to
escalating cases of infection.
"The concern is, particularly for European markets which have
really fallen out of bed, is that things will get a lot worse, and
the GDP data we're seeing showing a good rebound in Q3 is very much
irrelevant," said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG
Group.
"A lot of the assumptions that underpinned even limited European
equity market valuations over the summer now look quite impaired,"
he said.
Write to Xie Yu at Yu.Xie@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 30, 2020 04:39 ET (08:39 GMT)
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