Live updates, India PMI, oil prices

Stocks in Australia were off to a weak start Wednesday, with the main S&P/ASX 200 index down nearly 1% moments after the open.

The index hit an all-time high on an intraday basis in the previous session at 7,632.70.

Australia stocks ended 2023 with gains of 7.84%, and were among Asia-Pacific markets that wrapped up the year on a positive note.

Stocks have been boosted by hopes that the Reserve Bank of Australia will no longer be hiking interest rates after the central bank held rates steady at its last meeting of 2023, partly driven by the Federal Reserve’s more dovish tilt.

The Aussie dollar edged 0.06% higher on the day.

— Shreyashi Sanyal

Oil prices fell on Tuesday as traders monitored rising tensions in the Red Sea, amid a backdrop of record U.S. production and faltering demand in China.

The West Texas Intermediate contract for February lost $1.27, or 1.77%, to settle at $70.38 a barrel. The Brent contract for March shed $1.15, or 1.49%, to trade at $75.89. 

Crude prices had jumped more than 2% earlier in the trading session on escalating tensions in the Red Sea, a crucial global trade chokepoint. 

Danish shipping giant Maersk said Tuesday it will pause shipping through the Red Sea until further notice after one of its vessels came under attack by militants over the weekend.

“The market is basically saying ‘we will wait and see until something happens,'” Helima Croft with RBC Capital Markets told CNBC on Tuesday. “But it’s really getting much more serious every day,” she said of tensions in the region.

— Spencer Kimball

After finishing 2023 with a bang, the S&P 500 finished its first trading day of the new year in the red.

The 500-stock benchmark slid 0.57% to settle at 4,742.83, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 1.63% to close at 14,765.94, notching its worst day since October.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, however, gained 25 points, or 0.07%, to 37,715.04. It had earlier gained as much as 100 points and lost nearly 194 during the day’s trading session.

— Lisa Kailai Han

The U.S. manufacturing sector shrank more than expected in December, according to a new purchasing manager’s index from S&P Global.

The Manufacturing PMI came in at 47.9 in December, down from 49.4 in November and below the 48.2 expected by economists, according to Dow Jones. A decline in new orders was one of the factors that weighed on the PMI.

“Given current order book trends, the overall picture from the survey is one of supply exceeding demand for many goods, which points to downside risks to production, employment and prices as we head into 2024,” Chris Williams, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said in the release.

— Jesse Pound

Some of the biggest cybersecurity stocks saw even larger declines, with Crowdstrike and Zscaler each falling more than 3%.

— Jesse Pound