US investors batten down the hatches

Almost 5000 flights scheduled for today and tomorrow have been cancelled as weather forecasts predict the north-east of the US will experience 60 centimetres this week.

Those traders that braved the storms in order to stare at their screens or scream at market makers have seen the major benchmarks open lower following the Greek general election on Sunday.

The Dow Jones average was off 62 points (0.35%) at 17609; the S&P 500 was down 18 points (0.88%) and the NASDAQ Composite was 14 points (0.29%) lower at 4744.

As in Europe investors have been perturbed by political developments in Greece where far-left party Syriza fell just two seats short of securing a majority in parliament.

“Markets have been worried for some time about Syriza leading a Greek government due to its stated aims to increase public spending raise the minimum wage and negotiate a debt restructuring with the EU and ECB. In addition Syriza has not previously governed a country and the party is composed of many disparate left-wing factions. The uncertainty is likely to continue until a new government is formed and its policies are clearly established" suggested Darren Ruane head of Fixed Interest at Investec Wealth & Investment.

On the corporate front computing firms have been to the fore.

Business services provider IBM is to cut over a quarter of its workforce putting more than 100000 out of work. The shares rose almost 2% in early deals.

Hard disk maker Seagate Technology's earnings per share (EPS) of US$1.35 were in line with expectations though revenues of US$3.70bn were below forecasts of US$3.74bn.

Later on today software giant Microsoft will release quarterly results.