By Xie Yu and Jem Bartholomew
U.S. stock futures fell alongside international shares, suggesting American markets could come under fresh pressure when they open later Friday.
Markets have grown more volatile in recent sessions, ahead of next week's American presidential election and as investor concerns have built that increases in Covid-19 cases in Europe and the U.S. will prompt restrictions that could curb economic growth.
On Thursday, major U.S. indexes advanced, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average gaining 0.5% to snap a four-session losing streak. Still, ahead of Friday's trading the Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite are still on course for sharp weekly losses.
By midafternoon in Hong Kong, S&P 500 futures were 1.8% lower. Stock indexes in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Shanghai fell between 1.5% and 2.6%. Australia's benchmark S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.6%.
Prices for U.S. government debt rose, pushing the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury down 0.01 percentage point to 0.82%. In commodity markets, Brent crude, the global benchmark, dropped about 1% to $37.85 a barrel.
In Europe, the Stoxx Europe 600 fell 0.8% at the open, Germany's DAX dropped 1.1% and France's CAC 40 dipped 0.8% as markets digested fresh coronavirus lockdowns that are attributable to escalating cases of infection.
"The concern is, particularly for European markets which have really fallen out of bed, is that things will get a lot worse, and the GDP data we're seeing showing a good rebound in Q3 is very much irrelevant," said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG Group.
"A lot of the assumptions that underpinned even limited European equity market valuations over the summer now look quite impaired," he said.
Write to Xie Yu at Yu.Xie@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
10-30-20 0439ET
