US weakness sends global markets lower.

27th January 2014

Ian Copelin, Investment Director, my wealth, comments “Global equity markets have today extended last week falls, sending major benchmarks back to levels seen during the first half of December, amid data signalling a possible contraction in China’s factory output; a devaluation of Argentina’s peso; and declines from the Turkish lira to the South African rand knocked confidence.

Last Friday, the Dow Jones index dropped 318 points (or 1.96%), taking the loss for the week to 579.5 points or 3.52% – its worst one-week fall in two years. Given such a big loss, today’s market weakness is not a surprise as it is only natural to expect other markets to follow the US and suffer a knee-jerk sell-off.

Today, the FTSE-100 is currently down 90 points (1.35%). However, the US stock-index futures are pointing slightly higher – indicating that the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 Index will rebound slightly: futures on the Dow Jones are currently up 36 points (0.23%) and the S&P 500 is up 8.7 points (0.49%).”