US equities fell last Thur ahead of the three-day Easter weekend. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 113.36 pts, or 0.33%, to close at 34,451.23. The S&P 500 index fell 1.21%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite retreated 2.14%.
The small cap Russell 2000 dropped 0.99%. US financial markets reopen today (Mon). Megacap tech stocks were lower last Thur including Apple (AAPL US, -3.0%), Microsoft (MSFT US, -2.71%), Amazon (AMZN US, -2.47%), Alphabet (GOOGL US, -2.44%) and Meta Platforms (FB US, -2.24%).
Chip stocks, including NVidia (NVDA US, -4.26%) and Advanced Micro Devices (US, -4.79%) slumped.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note notched up 12.87 basis points (bps) to 2.8275%.
Last Thur, the front-month Brent and WTI futures closed up $2.92 at US$111.70/bbl and $2.70 at US$106.95/bbl respectively.
Last Fri, the ICE dollar index (DXY), which measures the strength of the greenback against a basket of currencies, rose 0.18% to 100.500. This morning (Mon), the EUR/USD is testing the US$1.0800, its lowest level against the dollar since May 2020.
Last Thur, the most actively traded US gold futures (Jun) contracts settled down $9.80, or 0.5%, at US$1,974.90/oz. May silver, which is the most actively traded silver futures, fell 33 cents, or 1.3%, to end at US$25.700/oz.
European equity markets finished higher last Thur. The UK FTSE gained 0.47%, France's CAC 40 rose 0.72%, while the German DAX advanced 0.62%.