|
President Donald Trump's threat to slap a 10% tariff on $300
billion of Chinese imports from next month, sent global markets
tumbling overnight and investors fleeing for perceived
safe-havens like U.S. Treasuries and the Japanese yen.
China on Friday said it would not be blackmailed and warned of
retaliation.
"The negative mood across markets suggests that investors are
jittery," Lukman Otunuga, senior research analyst at FXTM, said
in a note, warning again on the potential impact on growth.
Industrial bellwethers Boeing Co <BA.N> and Caterpillar Inc <CAT.N>
fell 0.5% and 1%, respectively, in premarket trading.
Shares of tariff-sensitive Apple Inc slid 1.1%, while
chipmakers, which get a large portion of their revenue from
China, also took a hit.
The sudden escalation in the trade rhetoric comes days after the
Federal Reserve played down expectations of further aggressive
monetary policy actions after cutting interest rates for the
first time in a decade.
Hopes that the Fed would be more accommodative to counter the
impact of the bruising trade war had helped Wall Street's main
indexes hit record highs last month.
The Labor Department's jobs report, due at 8:30 a.m. ET, will
likely show U.S. job growth slowed in July after outsized gains
in the prior month, with wages maintaining their moderate pace
of increase.
At 6:39 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis <1YMcv1> were down 44 points, or
0.17%. S&P 500 e-minis <EScv1> were down 8 points, or 0.27% and
Nasdaq 100 e-minis <NQcv1> were down 41.5 points, or 0.53%.
Semiconductor stocks Micron Technology <MU.O>, Nvidia Corp <NVDA.O>,
Applied Materials Inc <AMAT.O> and Intel Corp <INTC.O> fell
between 1% and 3%.
The second-quarter earnings season is in full swing, with 74.4%
of the 355 S&P 500 companies that have reported so far beating
profit estimates, according to Refinitiv data.
Analysts now see S&P 500 earnings growth of 2.5%, up from 0.3% a
month ago, according to Refinitiv data.
NetApp Inc <NTAP.O> slumped 18.8% after the data storage
equipment maker lowered its forecast for the first quarter and
2020, blaming a weakening macro environment in the latter half
of the quarter.
Pinterest Inc <PINS.N> jumped 17.1% after the online scrapbook
company raised its full-year sales forecast and reported
second-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimates.
(Reporting by Amy Caren Daniel in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil
D'Silva)
[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
