Stock futures fall slightly
U.S. stock futures fell in the morning, putting Wall Street on course for another losing session as traders weighed the latest comments from the head of the Federal Reserve.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell 78 points. S&P 500 futures fell 0.44%, while the Nasdaq-100 fell 0.44%. Of course, futures suffered more losses after President Joe Biden’s speech.
Chipotle fell more than 5.3% after its latest results missed expectations on the top and bottom lines. Meanwhile, cybersecurity stock Fortinet jumped more than 11% after the company posted its first earnings call.
Stocks closed near session highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average increased about 265 points or 0.79%. The S&P 500 rose 1.29%. Meanwhile, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite outperformed the other two indexes, gaining 1.92%.
Jerome Powell said inflation is slowing at an Economic Club of Washington event. He repeated comments from his press conference last week that fueled investor confidence that the Fed will soon halt or reverse interest rate hikes. The major averages initially jumped on notes before briefly dipping into negative territory before closing higher.
Maersk container shipping companies, reported a drop in fourth-quarter profit on Wednesday but posted its best full-year result in its history.
The Danish giant, widely regarded as a barometer of global trade, said its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) came in at $6.53 billion in the fourth quarter, below Refinitiv’s consensus analyst forecast of $6.76 billion and 8 . billion dollars. In the same quarter of 2021.
That took full-year underlying EBITDA to $36.85 billion, a fraction below the company’s $37 billion for the year but its clearest full-year result.
Turkey’s stock exchange suspended
Turkey’s stock exchange halted trading for the first time in 24 years, wiping $35.5 billion from the price of its main stock gauge after two devastating earthquakes.
The benchmark Borsa Istanbul 100 Index has lost 16.5% this week, wiping nearly $36 billion from the value of its member stocks after two strikes hit Turkey’s southern region. Turkish stocks, among the lowest performers globally this year, entered a bearish technical market on Tuesday after falling more than 21% from their January highs.
The decline in Turkish stocks is the worst three-day decline since December 2021 and would be the worst weekly since the 2008 financial crisis. Several market-wide circuit breakers were triggered on Tuesday and Wednesday after Turkey’s Capital Markets Board eased some preventive measures to stem the fallout.
Some exchange-traded funds that tracked Turkish assets in Europe and the U.S. continued to trade after the Turkish gauge was suspended. The iShares MSCI Turkey UCITS ETF fell about 8.5% in London, while the iShares MSCI Turkey ETF fell 5.28% in U.S. premarket trading.