 "Wall Street opens lower; US may be heading for a painful recession")
Wall Street is opening lower as worries build that the U.S. may be headed for a painful recession.
The S&P 500 fell 0.6% early Thursday.
Reports showed weakness in several areas of the economy, including the housing industry and manufacturing in the mid-Atlantic region, though they weren't quite as bad as expected and the job market appears to remain healthy.
They follow worse-than-expected readings a day earlier on retail sales, a cornerstone of the economy, and industrial production.
Altogether, they show an economy slowing under the weight of last year's blizzard of rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.
Wall Street drifted lower in premarket trading Thursday, extending the largest single-day retreat of the year Wednesday after new economic data heightened worries about the possibility of a recession.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 slid 0.8% before the opening bell.
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The U.S. government reported Wednesday that Americans cut back on their retail spending more than anticipated in December, the second consecutive monthly decline.
Separately, the Federal Reserve said U.S. industrial production, which covers manufacturing, mining and utilities, fell in December much more than economists had expected.
On the other hand, wholesale prices goods bought and sold before they reach the consumer fell for the sixth consecutive month, though those prices rose 6.2% in December from a year earlier.
Investors have been hoping that easing inflation and a slowdown in economic growth might influence the Federal Reserve's position on interest rates.
The central bank aggressively raised rates throughout 2022 in an effort to cool hot inflation.
But a key Federal Reserve policymaker said interest rates need to go higher than the central bank signalled earlier.
On the macro front, there remains lingering uncertainties about the outlook for the global economy," said Anderson Alves, trader at ActivTrades.
"A slew of disappointing U.S. data releases and hawkish Fed rhetoric are also adding to the risk-off mood across markets."
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)