Market Update & Important Indicators:
U.S. stocks tumbled, heading for their biggest one-day slide in months, as fresh escalations in the global trade conflict sent investors fleeing from some of the market's most-beloved technology firms. Fresh jabs between the White House and China exacerbated investor fears about a full-blown trade war. President Donald Trump is moving to bar Chinese companies from investing in U.S. tech firms and block additional tech exports to the country, in his latest effort to pressure Beijing. Chinese President Xi Jinping told a group of multinational chief executives that Beijing would "punch back." The blue-chip index fell as much as 446 points The Dow was recently down 1.3%. The S&P 500 dropped 1.4%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 2.1%. Monday's selling entangled a sector of the stock market that had been relatively resilient to the rise in trade tensions over recent months. Technology stocks have been a standout in the S&P 500 this year, rising 9.5% compared with the S&P 500's 1.5% gain. Companies like Twitter, Nvidia and consumer-discretionary firm Amazon.com have surged more than 40% apiece as investor’s funnelled money into firms upending everything from communication to brick-and-mortar retail. Technology companies in the S&P 500 pull in about 59% of their revenues from overseas, giving them the highest foreign exposure of the broad index's 11 sectors, according to FactSet and BofA Merrill Lynch data. The US gold price decreased 0.3% to 1,265.10 US$/oz.
European shares fell 2.2% as technology stocks lost ground in the face of trade-war jitters and cruise operator Carnival encountered choppy waters. The Stoxx Europe 600 dropped 7.96 points to 377.05 while Germany's DAX declines 2.5% and France's CAC 40 retreats 1.9%.
Asian stocks declined, with a number of markets seeing selling accelerate ahead of and as European trading began. Chinese equities steadily fell in afternoon trading, leaving the Shanghai Composite less than 0.5% from bear-market territory. Meanwhile, Hong Kong indexes closed down 1.3% and Singapore's benchmark was off 0.8% after the Philippines' PSEi ended with a 1.1% drop, notching its lowest close since the first trading day of 2017. Taiwan's benchmark fell 1% and the Nikkei–amid a strongly higher yen–fell 0.8% to match Friday's selling.
A pullback in financials helped keep Australia's stock index lower amid declines in much of the region, but the S&P/ASX 200 continued to outperform. It fell 0.2% to 6210.4 to notch a second-straight modest drop. After driving the market's advance in recent weeks, the big banks faltered, led by a 2.3% drop in CBA on its spinoff plans. Meanwhile, Telstra continued to slide, losing another 0.8% to a fresh 7-year low in the wake of its own restructuring plans. Energy and mining stocks bucked the trend, rising amid the end-of-week commodity-price gains.
Base metal prices were mainly down overnight on the London Metal Exchange. The 3-month copper contract decreased 0.6% to 6,749/t whilst tin finished 1.4% lower at 20,190/t. The price of aluminium fell 0.9% to 2,161/t and nickel declined 3.5% to 14,646/t. Zinc also fell by 2.1% to 2,914/t.
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