U.S. stock index futures fell late Sunday, pointing to losses as a predicted victory for the far-right party in Italy added to uncertainty over fears of rising interest rates and a recession.
After falling nearly 200 points earlier in the session, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures YM00;
S&P 500 futures ES00 were last down 50 points, or 0.2%.
and Nasdaq-100 futures NQ00,
An edge higher than their session lows as well.
Investors may have been reassured by Italy’s far-right leader Giorgia Meloni’s moderate tone on Sunday night, after partial national election results showed her party likely to win.
Stock futures were relatively flat before news broke that Italy’s Brothers, a far-right party with neo-fascist roots, was tipped to win. That could have a ripple effect on the euro, Italian banks and Italian government bonds, additional markets.
US Dollar Index DXY,
It rose 0.5% as the greenback continued recent gains against the euro USDEUR;
and the British pound USDGBP,
Wall Street suffered another week of losses on Friday due to the Fed’s latest jumbo rate hike.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA;
The S&P 500 SPX fell 486.27 points, or 1.6%, to close at 29,590.41.
Down 64.76 points, or 1.7%, at 3,693.23 and the Nasdaq Composite COMP;
It fell 198.88 points, or 1.8%, to end at 10,867.93.
For the week, the Dow fell 4% while the S&P 500 slipped 4.6% and the Nasdaq fell 5.1%, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Investors worry about the Fed’s ability to pull off so-called “soft landings” — raising interest rates to slow growth but not enough to cause a recession.
“We need a cold one,” Atlanta federation president Rafael Bostick said in an interview Sunday. But Bostic said he hoped there would be a soft landing and that “the economy will take over and slow down relatively systematically.”