Futures rise after two bruising weeks for tech as the Fed and megacap earnings loom
S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq futures all rose, with the Fed's Wednesday decision and Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon earnings ahead this week.
U.S. stock index futures rose early Monday after two straight weekly losses driven by a selloff in technology and artificial-intelligence shares. S&P 500 futures rose 0.3%, Dow futures added about 260 points, or 0.5%, and Nasdaq 100 futures gained 0.2%, as of about 5:50 AM ET. The Dow has been cushioned in recent weeks by buying in defensive sectors such as healthcare, utilities and industrials.
Asia was mixed overnight: Tokyo's Nikkei 225 fell 0.8% as chip stocks extended their losses, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.5% and Shanghai's composite added 0.2%. European shares opened flat to slightly higher, with energy stocks dragging as oil retreated; French bonds caught a reprieve after Moody's maintained France's Aa3 credit rating (see our oil story). Brazilian assets plunged in U.S. premarket trading after Lula's surprise election win (see our story).
The week's main event is the Federal Reserve's two-day meeting, which starts Tuesday with a decision due Wednesday at 2:00 PM ET. The central bank is widely expected to hold rates steady after September's quarter-point hike to 4.0% - fed funds futures put the odds of a hold at the current 3.75% to 4.00% target range near 90%. But with inflation still well above the Fed's 2% target, markets are watching for hawkish signals, and expectations for a December hike have risen in recent weeks. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh holds a press conference after the decision.
Earnings add to the stakes: Verizon and Welltower report today, Visa, Boeing and Coca-Cola on Tuesday, Alphabet and Microsoft on Wednesday, and Amazon on Thursday (see our full week-ahead preview). Investors are watching whether heavy AI infrastructure spending is paying off, and are wary of a brewing debt crunch among cloud providers (see our CoreWeave explainer). Bitcoin hovered near $80,400, little changed, after briefly slipping below $80,000 over the weekend (see our weekend story).
