Stock Market News Today: Dow Set to Open Down as Government Shutdown Starts
Stocks looked set to start October in the red, with investors on edge after the Senate failed to avert a government shutdown.
Futures tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 328 points, or 0.7%, after the index ended the third quarter by notching a record close on Tuesday. S&P 500 futures fell 0.8%, and contracts tied to the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 dropped 1% early Wednesday.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note climbed 1 basis point to 4.16%. Gold futures jumped 0.5% to $3,894 an ounce, and the U.S. dollar slipped 0.3% against a weighted basket of its peers.
The moves came after Republicans in the Senate failed to secure enough votes to pass a temporary funding bill. As a result, the U.S. government shut down just after midnight on Wednesday. The uncertainty looked to be weighing on stocks, which just wrapped up their best September in more than a decade thanks to investors’ hopes for Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts.
“Historically shutdowns have been bad for the dollar, bad for equities, and bad for bonds too,” Hargreaves Lansdown chief investment strategist Emma Wall said. “This is an unwelcome event for a market that has been on a tear since the tariff-induced lows of April, and had been building positive momentum thanks to the AI boom, a Fed rate cut and a near end to tariff uncertainty.”
Another factor that could move markets on Wednesday is the release of ADP private employment data. That may be the only broad national measure of job growth that markets get for a while, because Bureau of Labor Statistics operations will be suspended until the shutdown ends.
The BLS had been expected to publish September nonfarm payrolls figures on Friday.