U.S. stocks expected to tank Tuesday
Dow Jones Newswires
9:30 AM CST, January 21, 2008
U.S. stocks are expected to plummet at the open Tuesday, following Monday's selloff in Asia and Europe.
Mark Outten, trader at GFT Global Markets, calls the Dow Jones industrial average to tumble 385 points to 11,714 and the S&P 500 to tumble 54 points to 1,271.2. Earlier today, March contracts for the DJIA traded 522 points lower to 11,584.
Futures activity doesn't predict exactly what the market will do, but such a drop would be one of the largest in recent memory. It would surpass the 382-point industrials drop on Sept. 20, 2001, just days after the Sept. 11 attacks and the 387-points lost Aug. 9 on the first signs of a credit crunch.
Monday's session saw the S&P 500 front month futures contract trade as low as 1m256 despite U.S. markets closed for Martin Luther King Day. It currently trades down 3.6 percent at 1,277.1. Outten notes a press report saying the Bank of China will announce a significant write-down resulting from exposure to U.S. subprime.
Says this injected fears into European markets that the subprime fallout is still not contained. Separately, another trader adds US futures are being hit Monday to give an indication of how much the U.S. will have to correct on Tuesday to match where other global markets have moved.