Stock Market Today: Stocks Fall for Fourth Consecutive Session

Stocks closed lower Monday in a choppy session noticeably light on volume. A lack of economic news – and the fact that the bond market was closed in observance of Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples Day – helped make for a quiet day of trading. 

Still, heightened anxiety over central bank tightening (opens in new tab), a rising dollar and a dour outlook for the automotive industry made further declines the path of least resistance for equities. Shares in General Motors (GM (opens in new tab), -4.0%) and Ford Motor (F (opens in new tab), -6.8%) sold off after Wall Street analysts predicted both carmakers would suffer steep earnings declines next year. 

Sign up for Kiplinger's FREE Investing Weekly e-letter for stock, ETF and mutual fund recommendations, and other investing advice.

Subscribe to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance

Be a smarter, better informed investor.

Save up to 74%

Sign up for Kiplinger’s Free E-Newsletters

Profit and prosper with the best of Kiplinger’s expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more - straight to your e-mail.

Profit and prosper with the best of Kiplinger’s expert advice - straight to your e-mail.

Sign up

The bottom line? U.S. stocks kicked off the week with a fourth straight day of losses. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.3% to close at 29,202 while the broader S&P 500 slipped 0.8% to 3,612. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost -1.0% to settle at 10,542.

Other news in the stock market today:

• The small-cap Russell 2000 shed 0.6% to 1,691.
• U.S. crude futures declined 1.9% to $90.87 per barrel.
• Gold futures fell 2.0% to $1,675 an ounce.
• Bitcoin slipped 1.3% to $19,216. (Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day; prices reported here are as of 4 p.m.)

AI's Top Stock Picks

October is supposed to be the "bear market killer (opens in new tab)," but we've yet to see evidence of the 10th month coming to the rescue in 2022. An uncomfortably robust September jobs (opens in new tab) report did nothing to dissuade the Federal Reserve from sticking to its hawkish stance on inflation. And just when consumers were starting to see some relief from rising energy prices (opens in new tab), OPEC and its allies decided to slash production of crude oil. Although the move creates opportunities for investors in some of the best oil stocks (opens in new tab), it was decidedly bad news on both a personal finance and macroeconomic level. 

With the market off to one of its worst starts in history, it's clear that do-it-yourself investors need all the help they can get. Happily, a stock-picking platform driven by artificial intelligence has been sharp in the past – and it's open to retail investors. Danelfin's AI system not only identifies stocks with the highest probability of beating the market over the next 30 to 90 trading days, it also selects for names with the lowest risk profiles. Read on to learn about the fintech's top stock picks for Q4 (opens in new tab).