Advertisment
Stock futures were lower early on Monday following last week’s sell-off triggered by inflation jitters, suggesting investors may be in for more selling ahead.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrials withered 166 points, or 0.5%, to 34,152.
Futures for the S&P 500 dropped 19.25 points, or 0.5%, to 4,149.75.
Futures for the NASDAQ Composite index faltered 77.5 points, or 0.6%, to 13,309.50.
Media stocks were jumping in the pre-market on merger activity. AT&T is in advanced talks to merge WarnerMedia, which includes HBO, with Discovery, the companies announced Monday morning. The new entity will trade as its own public company.
Shares of Discovery were up 16% in early trading. AT&T shares were 4.9% higher.
Bitcoin was taken for a wild ride overnight Sunday. Earlier, the price tumbled below $43,000 after Elon Musk implied in a Twitter exchange that Tesla may have dumped its bitcoin holdings. Last week, Tesla said it would no longer accept bitcoin for car purchases due to environmental concerns.
Bitcoin then rebounded some after Musk later clarified in a tweet that the electric vehicle maker “has not sold any Bitcoin.” The price was last at $45,505. Shares of Tesla were off by 1% in pre-market trading.
The rest of Big Tech was mixed in premarket trading. Apple was slightly lower, but Amazon was higher.
Wall Street came off one of the wildest weeks of 2021 that saw the S&P 500 fall 4% through midweek amid heightened inflation fears. The broad equity benchmark eventually rebound and ended the week down just 1.4%.
The tech-heavy NASDAQ, which got hit particularly hard by inflation fears, dropped 2.3% last week. The blue-chip Dow fell 1.1% in that period. All three benchmarks posted their worst week since February 26.
Elsewhere, the first-quarter earnings season is wrapping up with more than 90% of the S&P 500 companies having reported their results. So far, 86% of S&P 500 companies have reported a positive EPS surprise, which would mark the highest percentage of positive earnings surprise since 2008 when FactSet began tracking this metric.
Walmart, Home Depot and Macy’s will deliver earnings on Tuesday.
Overseas, in Japan, the Nikkei 225 backed off 0.9%, while in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index advanced 0.6 % Monday.
Oil prices sank 31 cents to $65.06 U.S. a barrel.
Gold prices gained $10.00 to $1,848.10 U.S.
