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Technology and energy companies led stocks lower on Wall Street on Monday (US time), easing the market back from its recent all-time highs.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.1 per cent, erasing an early gain. Technology companies accounted for a big share of the decline. Industrial and consumer-centric stocks also fell. Those losses outweighed gains in health care companies, banks and elsewhere in the market.
Wall Street has made a cautious start to the week.Credit:AP
Despite the soft lead, the Australian sharemarket is set for a positive start with futures at 6.59am AEST pointing to a gain of 25 points, or 0.3 per cent, at the open.
Bitcoin hit a three-month high and broke through the $US46,000 ($62,760) barrier as gold fell.
Energy companies slumped the most among S&P 500 stocks as the price of benchmark US crude oil fell 2.6 per cent to its lowest levels since May. The move lower follows a decline of 7.7 per cent last week. Occidental Petroleum shed 3 per cent.
Every major index was coming off weekly gains last week, which ended with record highs for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The modest pullback is another example of the volatility the market has seen amid uncertainty over the impact COVID-19 variants will have on the economy and the Federal Reserve’s next monetary policy moves, said Sylvia Jablonski, chief investment officer at Defiance ETFs.
“People who got in and saw some of the stocks that they hold at all-time highs on Friday, perhaps they’re selling a little bit off today and might be opportunistically trading some of this volatility,” she said.
The S&P 500 fell 4.17 points to 4,432.35. The Dow dropped 106.66 points, or 0.3 per cent, to 35,101.85. The Nasdaq added 24.42 points, or 0.2 per cent, to 14,860.18.