U.S. futures on Thursday evening stateside pointed to a limited recovery for stocks on Wall Street at Friday’s open, a day after the major indexes saw a tumble for the second day in a row.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures shed 24 points, but implied an opening gain of 113.40 for the Dow at Friday’s open, as of 1:21 a.m. ET Friday. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures also pointed to opening gains for the other two major stock indexes stateside.
On Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 464.06 points to close at 22,859.6 — bringing its two-day declines to more than 800 points and its 5-day losses to more than 1,700 points. The S&P 500 shed 1.58 percent to end the trading day at 2,467.41 while the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.6 percent and closed at 6,528.41 after dipping into bear market territory during the session.
The Cboe Volatility Index — one of the market’s best gauges of marketplace fear — rose above 30.
Stocks fell to their lows of the day on Thursday after U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan announced that President Donald Trump would not sign a temporary government funding resolution.
The Senate unanimously approved a bill Wednesday night to keep the government running through Feb. 8 — without border wall money. Trump insisted Thursday that he would not sign it. It forced House Republicans to include the wall money in the new bill.
Later on Thursday, the House passed a temporary spending bill with more than $5 billion for Trump’s border wall — an inclusion which will likely impede its ability to clear the Senate.
Both House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have flatly said congressional Democrats will not approve wall money. As Republicans need Democratic votes to pass spending legislation in the Senate, a partial shutdown is all but assured if the GOP insists on funding for the barrier.
Amid concerns over a government shutdown days before Christmas, the White House was thrown into further political turmoil after Defense Secretary James Mattis resigned from his position on Thursday over disagreements with Trump.
Mattis, who is due to step down at the end of February 2019, said in a letter addressed to Trump that “because you have a right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours” on a number of subjects.
“I believe it is right for me to step down from my position,” he said.
The sell-off on Wall Street began on Wednesday after the U.S. Federal Reserve raised its benchmark overnight lending rate by one quarter point. That move was widely expected by markets but investors appeared to be triggered by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s comments that the central bank was satisfied with its current path to reduce the balance sheet with no plans to change it.
— CNBC’s Thomas Franck and Jacob Pramuk contributed to this report.
