Demand for crude is considered a barometer for global economic health, and markets across the world have closely tracked the rise and fall in the price of the oversupplied commodity this year.
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With the likes of computer memory maker Micron, hard disks maker Western Digital and online payments king PayPal all registering losses of more than 6%, it was no surprise that the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was the hardest hit of the three main benchmarks, down 2.3% or 101 points at 4,262.
Near 1550 GMT, US stocks had cut losses a bit, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 285.68 points (1.76 percent) at 15,919.29.
Proactive Investors is a global leader reporting financial news, media, research and hosts events for listed emerging growth companies and investors across four continents. USA 10-year Treasury yields fell to 1.764 per cent from 1.846 per cent on Friday as prices rose.
But Riyadh last Thursday lowered its crude price for Asian and European countries – a signal that it will keep its oil output unchanged to defend market share. The S&P 500 is down 9.3 per cent.
S&P 500 e-minis were down 24.5 points, or 1.31 per cent, with 379,941 contracts traded.
In currencies, the dollar fell 0.9 per cent against the yen, while the euro lost 0.2 per cent against the dollar.
Dismal sales outlooks from marquee technology names Tableau Software had sent shares in the enterprise sector crashing on Friday on fears that IT managers were curbing spending.
Spread betting quotes indicate the Dow Jones 30-share index will open at around 15,995, versus Friday’s close of 16,205.
IT services provider Cognizant on Monday added to those worries. Plus, there was wage growth of about 2.5 percent in the past year with the average wage jumping to $25.39 an hour in January.
Facebook shares tumbled 4.2%, while Twitter slid 5.3% to an all-time low.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 2,484 to 618, for a 4.02-to-1 ratio on the downside; on the Nasdaq, 2,029 issues fell and 804 advanced for a 2.52-to-1 ratio favouring decliners.
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BioCryst Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:BCRX) lost two-thirds of its value as it revealed the results of a clinical trial of its OpuS-2 treatment for hereditary angioedema (HAE) attacks.
