Stock futures are pointing to a lower open on Monday as major indexes enter the final week of August on track for their fourth straight month of gains.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 were recently down 0.3%, while Nasdaq futures fell 0.4%. Stocks surged on Friday after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled that the central bank could cut interest rates as soon as next month. The Dow hit its first record closing high since December, while the S&P 500 finished just shy of a new high.
Stocks have been boosted this month by investor hopes for rate cuts, reduced concerns about the potential impact of tariffs and generally strong corporate earnings reports. Coming into today’s session, the benchmark S&P 500 index was up 2% in August, while the Dow had gained 3.4% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had tacked on 1.8%.
The big event on the calendar this week will be the quarterly earnings report from AI chips giant Nvidia (NVDA), scheduled for Wednesday after the closing bell. Nvidia shares were down fractionally in premarket trading.
Other mega-cap tech stocks were mostly lower this morning, though the moves were small. Shares of Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Meta Platforms (META), Broadcom (AVGO) and Tesla (TSLA) were all down less than 1%. Alphabet (GOOG) shares ticked higher.
Shares of Intel (INTC) were up nearly 2%, after jumping more than 5% on Friday following news that the struggling chipmaker had agreed to sell a 10% stake to the U.S. government.
Crypto-related stocks were down sharply ahead of the bell as the price of bitcoin slumped after rallying Friday amid the renewed optimism about possible rate cuts. Shares of Strategy (MSTR), the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, dropped more than 4% this morning, while those of crypto exchange Coinbase Global (COIN) were down nearly 3%.
Bitcoin was trading at $111,200 recently, down from around $117,000 late Friday afternoon and at its lowest level since early July.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which affects borrowing costs on all sorts of loans, was at 4.28% this morning, up from 4.26% at Friday’s close. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the performance of the dollar against a basket of foreign currencies, rose 0.2% to 97.90.
West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. crude oil benchmark, advanced 0.7% to $64.10 per barrel, gaining ground for the fourth straight day after after falling to their lowest levels since early June early last week. Gold futures were down 0.1% at $3,415 an ounce.