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U.S. equity futures slipped lower Monday, while the dollar held gains against its global peers and Treasury yields steadied, as investors prepped for a holiday-shortened week following the strongest five-day run for stocks this year.
Stocks ended mixed on Friday with the Nasdaq squeezing out a modest gain as the three major indexes notched their strongest weekly gains of the year on the back of the Federal Reserve’s rate cut signaling, solid economic data and the ongoing rally in market-leading chip stocks.
Goldman Sachs analyst David Kostin in fact sees the so-called Magnificent 7 tech stocks, which include AI chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) , supporting further gains over the coming months in a report that lifted the bank’s bullish end-of-year target for the S&P 500 to 6,000 points.
On the flip side, former ‘bond king’ Bill Gross, the co-founder of PIMCO, warned late last week that “excessive exuberance” has carried markets to their recent string of all-time highs, powered in large part by “deficit spending and AI enthusiasm.”
Investors are unlikely to find clarity on either side of the ledger this week, with the trading calendar reduced to four days owing to the Easter observance Friday and a light slate of economic data releases and corporate earnings on tap.
The week’s highlight indeed will fall on Good Friday, when markets in the U.S. and Europe are closed. That’s the release of the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the PCE Price Index, for the month of February.
Monday’s focus is likely to fall on the bond market, where the Treasury will sell $66 billion in new 2-year notes later today as part of a three-day funding run that will raise around $176 billion and test investor appetite in the current inflation environment.
Benchmark 2-year-note yields were last marked at 4.615% heading into the start of the New York trading session, having fallen around 14 basis points last week following the Fed’s dovish rate forecasting.
The U.S. dollar index, meanwhile, was marked 0.31% higher at 104.326 as the yen continued to weaken on global foreign exchange markets and the euro eased on renewed European Central Bank rate-cut bets.
On Wall Street, stocks look set for a modestly weaker opening, with the S&P 500 poised for a 19 point decline and the Dow Jones Industrial Average called 108 points lower.
The Nasdaq, meanwhile, is called around 110 points lower with chip stocks such as Intel (INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) leading the decliners. The move follows a report that suggests China has introduced import guidelines that could limit that sale of U.S.-made semiconductors.
In overseas markets, Europe’s regionwide Stoxx 600, which hit an all-time high of 510.46 points last week, slipped 0.24% in early Frankfurt trading while Britain’s FTSE 100 was down around 0.33%.
Overnight in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 snapped a four-day winning streak with a 1.16% decline amid warnings from a government official that could suggest intervention to support the yen. The Japanese currency is withing touching distance of a 32-year low against the U.S. dollar.
The regionwide MSCI ex-Japan index, meanwhile, was marked 0.12% lower into the close of trading.
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