© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A Wall Street sign is pictured outside the New York Stock Exchange in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., April 16, 2021. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo
(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures fell on Monday, signaling a fresh round of selloff on Wall Street as fears over China’s COVID-19 outbreaks spooked investors already concerned about aggressive U.S. interest rate hikes.
Concerns around global growth reverberated across world markets, with Chinese shares marking their biggest slump since the pandemic-led selling in February 2020 and European stocks falling to their lowest in over a month on fears of strict restrictions in China.[MKTS/GLOB]
U.S.-listed Chinese shares like JD (NASDAQ:).com Inc, Alibaba (NYSE:) Group Holdings Ltd and Baidu Inc (NASDAQ:) declined between 2.9% and 4.4% in premarket trading.
Investors were also on edge at the start of a week that will see megacap companies like Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:) Inc, Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:), Facebook (NASDAQ:) owner Meta Platforms Inc, Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:) and Apple Inc (NASDAQ:) publish quarterly results. Their shares fell between 0.5% and 1.0%.
Disappointing results from pandemic darling Netflix (NASDAQ:) along with surging bond yields pummeled high-growth stocks last week, bringing year-to-date losses in the tech-heavy Nasdaq to 17.9%. The benchmark is down 10.3% so far this year.
Traders are pricing in big moves by the Federal Reserve this year to control inflation after a series of hawkish remarks from policymakers. Fed Chair Jerome Powell last week gave a “go” sign to a half-point rate hike in May and signaled he would be open to “front-end loading” the U.S. central bank’s retreat from super-easy monetary policy.
Money markets expect the Fed to raise interest rates by a half point at the central bank’s next two meetings. [IRPR]
At 07:04 a.m. ET, were down 236 points, or 0.7%, were down 32.5 points, or 0.76%, and were down 101.5 points, or 0.76%.
Among other stocks, Coca-Cola (NYSE:) Co slipped 1.1% even as its results beat quarterly revenue expectations.
Twitter Inc (NYSE:) gained 2.1% after reports that it kicked off deal negotiations with Tesla (NASDAQ:) Inc chief Elon Musk.
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