Stock futures dipped Tuesday evening after posting back-to-back sessions of losses at the close of the regular trading day, with the Dow swinging to its worst one-day decline since February.
Contracts on the Dow declined another 0.1% after the selloff. Contracts on the S&P 500, and those on the Nasdaq were also lower, after the latter index clawed back intraday losses of more than 2% to end just narrowly in the red.
Jitters over prospects of rising inflation have been at the forefront of investors' minds, with mounting signs of supply shortages in the face of surging demand threatening to spur a rapid rise in prices.
A report from the Labor Department on Tuesday showed job openings reached a record high in March, and a separate survey showed a record proportion of small business owners reported job postings that could not be filled last month. A system-wide disruption following a cyberattack on a key energy pipeline operator has sent gasoline prices higher, accelerating an already upward-moving trend in energy prices as demand for travel and fuel resurges coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We are finding input shortages — whether it's labor, or semiconductors, or raw materials – are slowing down production. Stocks are beginning to price this in. And tech, I call it noise, but really tech doesn't require strong economic growth to perform, we know it's more of a secular story," Jeffrey Kleintop, chief global investment strategist at Charles Schwab, told Yahoo Finance. "So I think it's moving past these trade winds that are blasting the rest of the market really focused on stagflation."
