FRIDAY – Stock index futures tanked on Friday morning, as investors feared President Donald Trump’s surprise threat of tariffs on all Mexico imports, amid a worsening trade war with China, could risk sending the U.S. economy into a recession.
Around 8:25 a.m. ET, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures indicated a drop of 270 points at the open. Futures on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq dropped by more than 1% each. The S&P 500 was already down 5.3% this month through Thursday after trade talks fell apart with China and rhetoric on both sides worsened in May.
The closely watched 10-year Treasury yield dropped to lows not seen since 2017. The U.S. benchmark was yielding 2.17% Friday morning. It was above 2.5% at the beginning of the month. Mexico’s currency, the peso, tanked against the dollar by more than 2% to trade at 19.6 per dollar.
On Thursday evening, Trump announced the U.S. would impose a 5% tariff on all Mexican imports from June 10 until illegal immigration across the southern border was stopped.
The trade war appears to be dragging down the Chinese economy. The country’s manufacturing activity contracted more than expected in the month of May, China government data out overnight showed. The official manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for May was 49.4, down from April’s reading of 50.1. PMI readings below 50 signal contraction.
Monthly Archives: May 2019
Trade Tensions Spook Stocks
MONDAY – A sharp sell-off will start the week on Wall Street after President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the U.S. will hike tariffs on goods imported from China, casting doubt on recent optimism that the world’s two largest economies were close to a resolution to their trade battle.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures dropped 457 points as of 8:32 a.m. ET which implied an opening decline of about 440 points. S&P 500 futures lost 1.5% and Nasdaq-100 Index futures dropped 1.9%.
China’s stock markets, meanwhile, fell sharply. The Shanghai Composite dropped 5.6% while the Shenzhen A Shares index plunged more than 7%.
Trump said in a tweet Sunday afternoon that the current 10% levies on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods will rise to 25% on Friday. He also threatened to impose 25% tariffs on an additional $325 billion of Chinese goods “shortly.”
The S&P 500, up 17.5% in 2019 alone, notched a record close on Tuesday. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, which has soared more than 20% this year, clinched a record close on Friday. The S&P 500 is set to drop 1.5% on Monday, which would be its biggest one-day decline since March 22, when it dropped 1.9%.
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