On Monday, Wall Street’s main indexes were set for a lower opening, extending declines for a third straight day as investors worried that another massive interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve could tip the US economy into a recession.

On Friday, the Nasdaq and S&P 500 logged their worst weekly percentage drop since June as markets fully priced in at least a 75-basis-point (BP) climb in rates during the week, with Fed funds futures showing a 21 per cent chance of a whopping 100 bps increase.

The S&P 500 has lost nearly 19 per cent so far this year on worries of a central bank-induced recession amid recent warnings of slowing demand from delivery firm FedEx (NYSE:FDX) and an inverted US Treasury yield curve.

The CBOE volatility index, also termed as Wall Street’s fear gauge, rose to 27.72 points, inching closer to a more than two-month high. On Friday, Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) cut its forecast for 2023 US GDP as it projects an aggressive Fed and sees that pushing the jobless rate higher than it previously projected.

At 8:20 am ET, Dow e-minis were down 269 points, S&P 500 e-minis were down 35 points, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 112.5 points. Giants Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), Meta Platforms, Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc, Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) Inc and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) Corp dropped between 0.9 per cent and 1.5 per cent in premarket trading.