Dow Jones leads US stock markets to a lower close- futures slightly in the green this morning

The noted results from the US retail giant, Walmart released yesterday weighed on the Dow Jones from the very onset of live trading. The Walmart results in themselves were not bad, but it was the Q1, 2025 outlook that really sent the share price lower on the opening and kept it that way until the close. Walmart eventually closed 6.53% lower yesterday and was the worst performer in the index. The thing is when we look at other companies in different spaces in Q1, we see earnings are set to fall by the end of the quarter in a number of sectors and that is worth noting in terms of the slightly longer term outlook, not just for the Dow, but for the S+P 500 too. At one point yesterday the Dow fell below 44k, hitting a session low at 43,950, but it did later recover a fair deal of that loss. The Dow Jones closed 450 points lower, at 44,176. That 1.01% fall compared to a loss of 0.43% for the S+P 500 and 0.48% for the Nasdaq 100. Just after the opening today, at 2.45pm GMT, the  Dow Jones will also face the same PMI data we had across Europe this morning. The index is currently priced to reopen at around 44,215