Wall Street ready to start the mixed week. Dow Jones futures are down 0.71% to 34,335 points; futures on the S&P 500 are down by 0.48% to 4.402 points while futures on the Nasdaq are up by 0.07% to 14.433 points.
This week’s major market mover will be the publication, on Friday 4 February, of the US employment report for the month of January.
The White House warned on Friday that the numbers could be affected by the effects of the spread of the Covid Omicron variant.
Economists interviewed by Dow Jones predict a job increase of just 178,000 new units, while the unemployment rate is stable at 3.9%.
With today, a disappointing month for the US stock market officially ends, the worst since the strong sell-offs that hit Wall Street at the beginning of the pandemic era, or in March 2020. The sentiment is explained by fears of growth out of control of inflation and with the Fed’s undeniably more hawkish tone.
The S&P 500 benchmark index is close to correction territory, down more than 8% from the intraday high tested earlier this month and down 7% in January.
The Dow Jones lost 4.4% in the month, also oriented to the worst month since March 2020.
The Nasdaq Composite instead starts the worst month since October 2008, with a thud of about 15% since last November, ready to close the worst January ever, with a decline in the month equal to -12%.
As if that weren’t enough, the Russell 2000 Small Cap Index is in the bear market.
The US quarterly season will continue this week: the budgets of giants of the caliber of
Alphabet, Starbucks, Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook), Amazon. About 1/3 of the companies listed on the S&P 500 have reported quarterly results so far, with 77% beating expectations according to FactSet.