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Dow plunges 600 points after Credit Suisse slide, Major bank shares fall, Bond yields dip, Oil hits 3-month low, Grocery and egg prices fall slightly, Facebook-parent Meta to slash 10,000 jobs.
US stock futures fell sharply lower on Wednesday amid concerns of a wider banking fallout as shares of Credit Suisse, a Swiss Bank that has large U.S. and global operations, tumbled more than 25% and as high as 30%. Trading in the bank’s plummeting chairs was halted several times throughout the morning. Credit Suisse’s largest backer, Saudi National Bank, said it will not provide further financial help for the bank, CNBC reported.
The Dow slid as much as 600 points and was still down -593 points or -1.84% as of 9:30 AM EDT on Wednesday, while S&P futures were down -70.5 points or -1.80%, and the NASDAQ slid -171 points or -1.40%, Yahoo Finance reported.
Amid the Credit Suisse turmoil, other major bank stocks were pulled down in the undertow. Citigroup and Wells Fargo slid nearly 5% each, Bank of America shed 4%, and Goldman Sachs fell around 3%, CNBC reported.
The benchmark 10-Year Treasury was down -0.161 to yield 3.475%, while the 2-Year Treasury was down -0.35 for a yield of 3.877% as of 9:35 AM EDT. Last week, the 2-year briefly reached above 5%.
Oil prices extended losses on Wednesday, as Brent crude hit a three-month low amid rising inflation and concerns in the banking industry mounted, all of which offset hopes of Chinese oil demand bringing a recovery, Reuters reported.
In oil futures, WTI crude was down -3.91% and trading at $68.31 a barrel, while Brent crude slid -3.60% and trading at $74.66 per barrel.
Grocery inflation has diminished for the sixth consecutive month after reaching highs in August 2022, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on the consumer price index (CPI).
Grocery inflation is up 10.2% year-over-year, and prices diminished 0.3% compared to January, which in turn was 0.4% higher than December 2022, Yahoo Finance reports.
Egg prices were down 6.7% in February compared to January, where they had jumped 8.5% from December due to the avian flu outbreak. However, egg prices are still 70.1% higher year-over-year.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, plans to lay off another 10,000 workers. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the job cuts will occur “over the next couple of months” and told employees in a memo that the company is going through “a challenging period.” The announcement follows a previous statement in November that Meta was eliminating approximately 13 percent of its workforce or roughly 11,000 jobs. It was the largest single round of layoffs in the company’s history, CNN reported.
