Investing.com – Wall Street fell on Monday, as investors shied away from risk on fears of the trade war between the U.S. and China escalating.
The Dow fell 203 points or 0.8% by 9:40 AM ET (13:40 GMT), while the S&P 500 lost 22 points or 0.8% and the Nasdaq composite was down 69 points or 0.9%.
Markets have struggled to maintain momentum since falling sharply after U.S. President Donald Trump ended a trade truce with China in early August. Trump said on Friday he was not ready to make a deal with China, after a string of tit-for-tat exchanges in the course of the week.
Still, at least some analysts expect the dip in equities to be short-lived.
“We continue to believe that the current period of volatility will not have a longer duration than what we have seen during the May pullback,”JP Morgan global equity strategists said in a note.
“Trade remains a wild-card, but we think a chance of a ceasefire into September, with a potential that the latest tariff threat is not implemented, should not be dismissed.”
Meanwhile tensions between Asian financial hub Hong Kong and China grew over the weekend, with more reports of violence erupting between protesters and police.
Barrick Gold (NYSE:GOLD) jumped 1.7% after it said it was on track to hit the higher end of its projected profit range this year, due in part to a 27% rise in gold production driven by strong performances at mines in Mali and Argentina.
ABB (NYSE:ABB) jumped 3.4% after it appointed Bjorn Rosengren as its CEO, while Roku (NASDAQ:ROKU) jumped 5.5% on an analyst upgrade after strong results last week.
Banks were lower amid fears that lower long-term interest rates will hit their profit margins, with Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) all falling over 2%.
The FAANG group of stocks were also lower after the open, with Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) down 1%.
In commodities, crude oil jumped 1.2% to $55.12 a barrel while the U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, slipped 0.1% to 97.188. Gold futures inched up 0.4% to $1,513.95 a troy ounce.