U.S. stock futures pointed to a negative Wednesday morning in the wake of Wall Street’s steep fall on Monday.
On Tuesday evening stateside, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures recovered from an earlier tumble to imply an opening decline of just 8.2 points, as of 7:22 p.m. ET. S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures also pointed to slight negative moves for when the indexes open on Wednesday.
American exchanges were closed on Tuesday for the Christmas holiday, but stocks are inheriting downside momentum from a Monday plunge when they recorded their worst Christmas Eve trading ever — and the S&P 500 entered a bear market.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 653 points Monday in volatile trading, falling below 22,000. The Dow sank more than 2 percent, then recovered nearly all of the day’s losses, before again falling more than 2 percent. The S&P 500 fell 2.7 percent, slipping into a bear market as it fell 20.06 percent from recent highs. Wall Street traditionally considers a drop of 20 percent or more from recent highs to be a bear market. The Nasdaq Composite Index slid 2.2 percent.
And the negative sentiment is global: On Tuesday, the globally watched Nikkei 225 in Japan fell 5 percent.
—CNBC’s John Melloy and Michael Sheetz contributed to this report.
