Major U.S. indexes slide >1%; small caps, banks hit harder All major S&P sectors red: energy weakest Euro STOXX 600 index down ~1.4%; was off 2.6% at low Dollar, gold slip; bitcoin declines, crude off >5% U.S. 10-Year Treasury yield dips to ~1.38% Dec 20 - Welcome to the home for real-time coverage of markets brought to you by Reuters reporters. You can share your thoughts with us at markets.research@thomsonreuters.com U.S. STOCKS REEL IN EARLY TRADE (0953 EST/1453 GMT) Major U.S. indexes are sharply lower on Monday, dragged down by concerns about the impact of tighter COVID-19 curbs on the global economy, and a potentially devastating setback to President Joe Biden"s investment bill. Among other developments, China cut its lending benchmark loan prime rate (LPR) for the first time in 20 months on Monday read more , and Turkish markets are under pressure following President Tayyip Erdogan"s defense of low interest rates on Sunday. With this, the Euro STOXX 600 (.STOXX) is off around 1.4%. However, it was down 2.6% at its worst level of the day. In the early throes of U.S. action, it is a sea of red. With this, more economically sensitive S&P 500 (.SPX) sectors are taking the biggest hits, while, not surprisingly, defensive bond-proxy groups are off the least. Here is an early U.S. trading snapshot: earlytrade12202021 earlytrade12202021 (Terence Gabriel) ***** DOW INDUSTRIALS: SICK AGAIN (0900 EST/1400 GMT) U.S. equity index futures are tumbling on Monday, dragged down by fears over tighter restrictions on the global economy, as a result of the Omicron variant. Given action in CBT e-mini Dow futures , the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) is poised to slide more than 400 points when regular-session trading kicks off. This relapse is occurring after the blue-chip average failed to register a close above the 76.4%/78.6% Fibonacci retracement zone of its November-December slide at 35,961.87/36,018.16, keeping alive the potential that its December bounce was counter-trend read more : Dow12202021 Dow12202021 With early weakness Monday, the DJI can once again threaten its rising 200-day moving average (DMA), which ended Friday around 34,605. Key support resides at a broken log-scale resistance line from 1929, which now comes in around 34,100, and the Dow"s Dec. 1 low, which is at 34,006.98. Closing below this support zone can suggest the potential for a much greater decline, given that trend line has subsequently contained Dow weakness since it was first overwhelmed in March. A reversal back over the 50-DMA, however, which ended Friday around 35,545, can see the Dow make another go at the Fibonacci barrier. read more (Terence Gabriel) ***** FOR MONDAY"S LIVE MARKETS" POSTS PRIOR TO 0900 EST/1400 GMT - CLICK HERE: read more