• The Nasdaq fell less than a point to close Monday’s session at 13,790.92.
• Splunk rose 9.1% on a US$20bn takeover offer from Cisco Systems.
• Moderna tanked 12% on slowing Omicron spread & health regulators’ decision.

The US markets started the week lower as investors assessed the possibility of war between Russia and Ukraine in addition to the rising prospect of the Fed raising interest rates in the very near future to address rising inflation. Oil prices climbed in afternoon trade over concerns that a war between Russia and Ukraine would lead to lowered supply of Russian crude oil.

The Dow Jones fell 0.49% to finish the trading day down 172 points to close at 34,566 points.

The tech heavy NASDAQ fell 0% to finish the trading day down 0 points to close at 13,791 points

One bitcoin is worth US$42,802 going into the Asian trading day.

The Australian dollar is stronger against the major currencies and is buying 71.27 US cents.

US-based software analytics company Splunk rose 9.1% on Monday following reports that networking giant Cisco had made a US$20bn takeover offer. Cisco and Splunk are already partners on data security and Cisco has recently been shifting more attention toward software and recurring revenue in the software space.

Shares of biotech giant Moderna tanked 11.68% on Monday amid a broad sell-off in vaccine-maker stocks as data shows the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 continues to subside. Investors also sold out of Moderna stocks after health regulators on Friday decided to delay a decision on authorising any COVID-19 vaccine for children under 5-years.

And new reports suggest that since taking over the popular game Wordle, the New York Times have made the guessing game harder through more challenging 5-letter words.