As DowDuPont Inc. prepares this weekend to complete its split into three independent chemical makers, Chief Executive Officer Ed Breen counseled patience to investors who might be frustrated by their shares' shrinking value.
U.S. stock indexes opened firmly lower Wednesday morning as worries about trade tensions and the outlook for global growth sparked buying in assets perceived as havens like government paper, which resulted in the heightened warning signal from a closely watched fixed-income recession warning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 200 points, or 0.8%, at 25,159, the S&P 500 index retreats 0.6% at 2,785, while the Nasdaq Composite Index falls 0.7% at 7,554. Chinese state-media reports underlined the country's scope to userare-earth minerals, used in the production of everyday devices, such as mobile phones, memory chips and rechargeable batteries, as an economic weapon. The spread between the 10-year Treasury note and the 3-month Treasury bill moved further into negative territory, dropping to its lowest since 2007. Such inversions of that measure of the yield curve are viewed as reliable recession indicator. In corporate news, shares of DowDuPont Inc. were in focus, after the materials and chemicals company said Wednesday that it expects to book noncash goodwill impairment charges of $800 million to $1.3 billion, following the 2017 merger of The Dow Chemical Company and E.I. du Pont de Nemours.
DowDuPont leads the Dow lower, while chip stocks falter.
DowDuPont shares have plummeted 12% since the company reported earnings. Based on Wall Street reports, it is difficult to figure out why. Barron’s thinks we know: It was spinoff hype.