Investing.com – Wall Street futures pointed to a lower open on Monday as the sell-off in tech names looked set to continue and investors braced for the two-day meeting of the Federal Reserve (Fed) this week.
The blue-chip Dow futures lost 31 points, or 0.14%, at 6:59AM ET (10:59GMT), the S&P 500 futures fell 5 points, or 0.23%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures traded down 38 points, or 0.65%.
Despite the fact that the Nasdaq managed to hit a record high last Friday, sentiment turned with the tech-heavy index closing with losses of 1.8% and the decline looked set to continue with all the big-tech names showing losses of more than 1% in pre-market trade Monday.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) closed Friday with losses of nearly 4%, its largest drop in 14 months, but shares were trading around 2% lower in pre-market trade on Monday as the tech giant received its second downgrade in a week.
Mizuho Securities cut is recommendation on Apple to hold from buy with a reduction in the target price by $10 to $150 as these analysts believe that the release of the iPhone 8 will not expand the user base.
Yet some experts pointed to the fact that Apple’s drop is just undergoing a healthy correction after the stock had climbed more than 30% so far this year.
The other top four major tech stocks, Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) also appeared to set to suffer from a second day of profit-taking with other tech favorites such as Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) or Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) set to follow suit.
The tech sell-off was the major theme on Monday, dragging both Asian and European stocks lower.
In positive company news, shares of General Electric (NYSE:GE) rose more than 2% in pre-market trade as the blue-chip conglomerate announced that chairman and chief exec Jeff Immelt was stepping down and that John Flannery, current president and CEO of GE Healthcare, would be taking over as chief exec of the company, effective August 1 and then as chairman as well from January 1.
In a session with no major economic reports, investors await the start of the Fed’s two-day meeting on monetary policy with the central bank largely expected to hike rates on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, oil prices rebounded on Monday, recovering from weekly losses of near 4% spurred by concerns over rising production in U.S. shale and from oil producers such as Libya and Nigeria that are exempt from output curbs in the OPEC agreement with non-OPEC members.
U.S. crude futures gained 1.44% to $46.49 by 7:08AM ET (11:08GMT), while Brent oil rose 1.58% to $48.91.