What time does the US stock market open? The reasons why Nasdaq & Dow Jones futures are down

Last week was a tough one for Wall Street. The S&P500, the Nasdaq, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed increased unemployment and fewer jobs than expected were added to the US economy. Many are pointing to the jobs report to explain some of the fears circulating on Wall Street, but several other factors compound their effect on the herd mentality often seen by stock traders.

Trading will begin on Wall Street around 9:30 am ET, and it could be a doozy as futures indicate further drops across the stock market.

What is causing futures to drop?

One of the main causes of concern on Monday morning is the state of the Japanese economy. The Nikkei 225, which tracks a bundle of stocks within the Japanese market, has fallen over 12 percent today and, zooming out, is down over 23 percent over the last month. Such rapid signs of decline are of serious concern and will impact other markets, particularly as the geopolitical situation in the Middle East continues to escalate.

Crypto markets are also seeing massive sell-offs. On Monday, the price of Bitcoin fell nearly 10 percent before trading on Wall Street began. The Coindesk has reported that over 200,000 crypto traders “liquidated” their portfolios over the weekend, with a sell-off totaling more than a billion dollars.

In addition to these economic events, the Federal Reserve’s decision to maintain interest rates at their current level during the FOMC meeting last week and the job’s report, international events could fuel fears on Wall Street. A regional war in the Middle East could upend the steady access to petroleum that the US economy relies on as its manufacturing has been outsourced. Though the stock market indices for the United States were trading lower, there was one sector that was continuing to see growth last week: defense and weapons manufacturing.

The stocks of Lockheed Martin and United Technologies were trading up 4.93% and 2.16%, respectively, last week.

What could be the consequences for consumers?

With many products consumed in the us produced abroad, getting them to store shelves at an affordable price point requires access to cheap oil. If oil prices begin to soar again, as they did after the Russian escalation of the war in Ukraine in early 2022, inflation in the US could once again begin to tick up. Consumers in the US already saw how more expensive fuel prices allowed companies to pass on those costs to consumers far and beyond what was needed to recoup their profits. One study conducted by the Groundwork Collective found that corporate price gouging was responsible for a significant portion of the inflation that had wracked the US economy.