Ugly day to start the month of September in US equity market

The major US stock indices had an ugly day to start the new trading month. The NASDAQ index led by Nvidia and other chip stocks stumbled and tumbled. The index had its worst trading day since August when the index fell -3.43%:

A look at some of the chip stock shows:

• Nvidia, -9.53%. The stock closed below its 100-day moving average at $110.34.
• Micron, -7.96%
• Broadcom, -6.16
• AMD, -7.83%
• Intel, -8.80%

Looking at the major indices:

• Dow industrial average fell -626.15 points or -1.51% at 40936.94. The decline was the worst since August 1.
• S&P index fell -119.47 points or -2.12% at 5528.92. That was the worst trading day since August 5.
• NASDAQ index fell -577.33 points or -3.26% at 17136.30. That was the worst trading day since August 5

The small-cap Russell 2000 fell -68.42 points or -3.09% at 2149.21. That was also its worst trading day since August.

Looking at the daily chart of the NASDAQ index, it closed just above its 100 day moving average at 17094.27, after trading below that moving average intraday to a low of 17057.79. Tomorrow will be a key day technically.

The market did not like the weaker economic data today. S&P Global PMI data, ISM PMI and US construction spending were all weaker than expectations which helped to kickstart an already weak stock opening.

US jobs data will be released on Friday with the 164K vs 114K last month. The unemployment rate is expected 4.2% versus 4.3% last month.

Traditionally, September is a weaker month for stocks.

This article was written by Greg Michalowski at www.forexlive.com.