US Stock Markets Today: S&P 500, Dow Jones Retreat From Record Highs Amid Govt Shutdown Fears

S&P 500 and Dow Jones fell on Monday after interest-cut optimism pushed the benchmark to a fresh high at the end of last week. In addition, the risk of possible government shut down added to the downbeat sentiment.

Shortly after the opening bell, the S&P 500 fell over 0.19%, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was up 0.2%, and Dow Jones was trading 0.37% lower.

Last week, S&P 500 and Dow Jones rose 1.2% and 1%, respectively, while Nasdaq rose 2.2% after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point.

The Wall Street sentiment on Monday was weighed with fears of a potential government shutdown, as the US Senate has rejected Republican and Democratic proposals to temporarily fund the federal government. The logjam comes ahead of the deadline for lawmakers to fund the government, which ends on Sept. 30.

If the House of Representatives and the Senate do not pass a funding legislation, then the government will shut down on Oct. 1.

A shutdown means that government's mandatory services like Border Patrol, Postal Service and Social Security will continue, but federal workers will not be paid.

Commenting on the opening of Wall Street, Mark Haefele of UBS Global Wealth Management told Bloomberg that "there are reasons to be mindful" given the current high valuations compared to long-term averages. “After such a strong recent run, a period of consolidation should not come as a surprise, in our view,” he said.

In the early minutes of trading, 10 of the 11 sectoral indices was trading in red. Information technology was the only sector in green.

Apple Inc., Tesla Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. were among the gainers so far. Salesforce Inc., Amazon.com Inc. Nvidia Corp. was down nearly 1%, while Boeing Co. and Procter & Gamble Co. were also among the drags in early trade.

As the US market opened, spot gold was trading 1% higher at $3,723.61 an ounce. Crude oil prices fell, with the West Texas Intermediate trading 1% lower at $62.05 per barrel.

The Bloomberg Dollar Index fell 1%, with the British Pound rising 0.3% to $1.1781 and the Japanese yen edging 0.1% up at 147.77 per dollar.

Bitcoin, the largest traded cryptocurrency fell 2.1% to $113,004.15.