Wall Street May See Some Bargain Hunting

(RTTNews) - Stocks may swing between gains and losses on Monday morning on Wall Street with investors looking for direction after recent sharp losses and tracking the developments on the political front.

Stock futures initially edged higher Monday morning on reports that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke to the chief executives of a few big banks and that the officials have confirmed that the liquidity position is quite strong.

According to reports, Munchin tried to assure markets that the Fed Chief Jerome Powell would not be removed from his post. Mnuchin will reportedly chair a meeting of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets later in the day.

Market sentiment has been dented due to a partial U.S. government shutdown over President Trump's demand for more funds for a wall on the border with Mexico.

Amid increasing possibility of the U.S. government shutdown moving past Christmas and into the New Year, a section of investors may choose to stay away from the market for a while. Volume of business, anyway, is likely to remain rather thin ahead of tomorrow's holiday for Christmas. Today's session will be a short one, with the market closing at 1:00 PM ET.

Stocks posted steep losses on Friday and the major indices ended at their lowest closing levels in over a year. The Dow slumped 414.23 points or 1.8 percent to 22,445.37, the Nasdaq plummeted 195.41 points or 3 percent to 6,332.99 and the S&P 500 tumbled 50.80 points or 2.1 percent to 2,416.62.

For the week, the Nasdaq nosedived by 8.4 percent, while the S&P 500 and the Dow plunged by 7.1 percent and 6.9 percent, respectively.

European markets were edging lower Monday morning amid lingering trade tensions and concerns over a partial U.S. government shutdown.

Asian markets ended mixed on Monday as investors refrained from making big moves, weighed by the impact of a partial U.S. government shutdown and increasing trade tensions. Comments by White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro that the U.S.-China trade war would not come to an end in near term weighed as well.

In commodities, crude oil futures for February were declining $0.60, or 1.32 percent, at $45.00 a barrel.

Natural gas futures were down $0.090, or 2.41 percent, at $3.660 per million btu.