• The Dow Jones tumbled 500 points on Monday as investor confidence buckles.
• Markets have fallen victim to new recession fears after US ISM figures miss the mark.
• Investors are jostling for position ahead of this week’s bumper NFP jobs report.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) backslid to kick off the new trading week on Tuesday after US markets took the Labor Day holiday off. US traders were greeted by a fresh misprint in US ISM Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) figures that failed to meet expectations of a rebound in the print, sending a fresh round of recession fears rippling through equity markets.

ISM’s Manufacturing PMI for August came in below expectations, printing at 47.2 and missing the median market forecast of 47.5. Despite a soft rebound from July’s multi-month low of 46.8 failed to galvanize markets, giving already flighty investors a perfect excuse to pull back from a recent lopsided tilt into bullish expectations.

Tuesday’s overall decline has kicked off September’s trading with a notable bearish note as markets remain leery of softer US data on a per-release basis. An overall decline in the tech sector extended a broad-market pullback as the AI darling race begins to show cracks, with high-profile semiconductor companies struggling to hit lofty growth metrics.