Stock market today: Wall Street points to losses in the final days of 2024
Wall Street retreated into light premarket trading on Monday as the year draws to a close, without the euphoria that pushed markets to record highs in 2024.
Future for the S&The P500 fell 0.4% before the bell, while futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.3%.
South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.2% to 2,399.49 and shares of Jeju Air Co., a low-cost South Korean airline, lost 8.7% after one of the company’s Boeing 737-800s fell. slid off a runwaysmashed into a concrete wall and burst into flames on Sunday, killing 179 of the 181 people on board. Authorities were investigating why the plane’s landing gear failed to deploy.
The disaster was yet another blow Boeing after one engineers strike, further safety problems with its troubled top-selling aircraft and a plummeting stock price. Shares fell 3% in premarket trading and are down more than 30% this year.
Despite some post-Christmas sluggishness, US financial markets are getting closer to another standout annual finish. The S&The P 500 is on track for a gain of about 25% in 2024. That would mark a second consecutive annual gain of more than 20%, the first time since 1997-1998.
The gains are partly due to optimistic economic data showing that consumers have continued to spend and that the labor market remains strong. While inflation is still high, it is also steadily declining.
The flow of optimistic economic figures and decreasing inflation contributed to a reversal in the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy this year. Expectations for interest rate cuts also contributed to market gains. The central bank recently implemented its third interest rate cut in 2024.
In Asia, the Nikkei 225 index in Tokyo ended 1% lower at 39,894.54. The final trading session of the year ended on a somber note as Japan Exchange Group CEO Hiromi Yamaji apologized for a recent insider trading case during the traditional end-of-year ceremony.
“I recognize that confidence in the market is essential for investors to trade with confidence,” Yamaji said. The exchange is working to improve training and verify the findings of an independent study, he said, adding that “we are doing our utmost to rebuild the market. trust and prevent this from happening again.”
In early European trading, Germany’s DAX fell 0.1%, Paris’ CAC 40 rose 0.2% and Britain’s FTSE 100 was unchanged.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 0.2% to 20,041.42, while the Shanghai Composite index gained 0.2% to 3,407.33. The Australian S&The P/ASX 200 fell 0.3% to 8,235.00.
U.S. benchmark crude rose 28 cents to $70.88 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 20 cents to $73.99 a barrel.
The dollar traded at 157.55 yen, while the euro rose to $1.0445.