Bloodbath on Wall Street as Dow, Nasdaq Futures Plunge Amid Recession Fears

Dow futures and Nas­daq futures were both down more than 1,000 points before Mon­day’s open­ing bell, while the S&P 500 futures gave up near­ly 5%, as Wall Street pre­pared for a sig­nif­i­cant sell­off trig­gered by the melt­down in Japan and renewed fears of a US recession.

Japan’s Nikkei Index Suffers Worst Single-Day Retreat Since “Black Monday”

The Tokyo-based Nikkei index suf­fered its worst sin­gle-day retreat since the infa­mous “Black Mon­day” crash of 1987, clos­ing 12.4% low­er, while Euro­pean stocks fell to near six-month lows. 

The pan-Euro­pean STOXX 600 index was down 2.6% at 487.15 points, its low­est since Feb­ru­ary 13.

Tech Giants Hammered as Investors Brace for Recession

Some of the world’s largest tech com­pa­nies, includ­ing Nvidia, Meta, and Apple, all lost 6% of their mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion in the ear­ly trad­ing session. 

Apple, the iPhone mak­er, was still reel­ing from the announce­ment that bil­lion­aire investor War­ren Buf­fett had cut his stake in the com­pa­ny by half, though Buf­fett remains the fir­m’s largest shareholder.

Cryptocurrency Market Loses $1.79 Trillion in Value

Cryp­tocur­ren­cy was also hit hard by Mon­day’s melt­down in the markets. 

Bit­coin shed more than 17% of its val­ue, while Ethereum was down more than 21%.

The glob­al dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy mar­ket lost a total of $1.79 tril­lion from its mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion over the course of the last 24 hours.

Weak Jobs Report and Global Selloff Fuel Expectations of Fed Rate Cuts

The most recent jobs report, which showed hir­ing crawl­ing to a slow­er-than-expect­ed pace, had Wall Street fear­ful of the prospects of a recession. 

Ana­lysts at invest­ment bank­ing giant Gold­man Sachs on Sun­day raised the odds of a reces­sion next year from 15% to 25%, though they cau­tioned that such a risk was “lim­it­ed.”

The weak jobs report and the glob­al stock sell­off have also fueled ana­lyst expec­ta­tions that the Fed­er­al Reserve will step in and insti­tute emer­gency inter­est rate cuts in hopes of re-ener­giz­ing the economy.