Wall Street slips ahead of mammoth week with Fed, earnings
NEW YORK (AP) – THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
NEW YORK (AP) —
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
Wall Street was poised to open lower Monday as attention turns to this week’s Federal Reserve decision on interest rates and a week of big tech earnings.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrials fell 0.6% and the S&P 500 fell 0.8% before the opening bell.
New data released on Friday showed US inflation cooling further, raising hopes of a smaller, less painful rise than last year’s series of aggressive “jumbo” hikes. The Fed’s preferred metric, which excludes food and energy costs, was up 4.4% in December from a year earlier. That was down from inflation of 4.7% in November.
Americans’ income growth slowed in December, while consumer spending fell slightly more than expected.
Economists believe Friday’s data keeps the Fed on track to raise interest rates by 0.25 percentage points on Wednesday, a step back from last month’s 0.50-point hike and four consecutive 0.75-point hikes before that.
Big Tech begins posting earnings after Pfizer, General Motors, McDonald’s and Exxon Mobil released quarterly financial results on Tuesday. Facebook parent Meta posted earnings on Wednesday, followed a day later by Alphabet, Apple and Amazon.
Starbucks and Ford are also posting gains this week.
In Europe, Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 both fell 0.5% at midday. Britain’s FTSE rose less than 0.1%.
Reports that holiday travel was almost back to normal during last week’s Lunar New Year celebrations raised expectations that China’s economy could regain momentum faster than expected after easing pandemic restrictions late last year.
In the first trading session after a week’s pause, the Shanghai Composite Index was up 0.1% to 3,269.32. However, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 2.7% to 22,069.73 on strong selling from technology stocks. E-commerce giant Alibaba fell 7.1% after reports it was building a facility in Singapore that some speculated could become its global headquarters.
The company denied planning such a change, saying the new Singapore campus will house regional operations with partners like Lazada. Alibaba is headquartered in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou.
Taiwan’s benchmark was lifted 3.8% on gains from TSMC, the world’s largest computer chip maker, which rose 8%.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.2% to 27,433.40. South Korea’s Kospi was down 1.3% to 2,450.65 and the S&P/ASX 200 in Sydney was down 0.2% to 7,481.70.
India’s Sensex slipped 0.4% and Bangkok’s SET fell less than 0.1%.
Shares of some companies in the Adani group have regained some lost ground after recent massive losses after US short selling firm Hindenburg Research issued a report alleging major problems within India’s second-largest conglomerate, which has holdings in the areas Energy, data transmission, construction and other large business has industries.
Its flagship, Adani Enterprises, gained 2.3%, but shares of some other publicly traded Adani companies fell between 5% and 20%.
The Adani Group said it was considering legal action against Hindenburg following its allegations of stock market manipulation and accounting fraud.
On the other day of trading, US benchmark crude fell 14 cents to $79.54 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It lost $1.33 to $79.68 a barrel on Friday.
Brent crude, the international price benchmark, fell nine cents to $86.31 a barrel.
The dollar rose to 130.03 Japanese yen from 129.80 yen. The euro rose to $1.0900 from $1.0865.
On Friday, the S&P 500 was up 0.2%. It has rallied so far this year on growing belief that inflation is declining and could ease pressure on the economy and markets. The Dow was up 0.1% and the Nasdaq was up 0.9%.
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Kurtenbach reported from Bangkok; Ott reported from Washington.
Elaine Kurtenbach and Matt Ott, The Associated Press
