Dow Futures Rise 220 Pts; JOLTS, Consumer Confidence Data in Focus
2022.08.30 14:22
By Peter Nurse
Investing.com — U.S. stocks are seen opening higher Tuesday, stabilizing after weakness in the wake of the affirmation of a hawkish Federal Reserve at the Jackson Hole symposium.
At 07:00 ET (11:00 GMT), the Dow Futures contract was up 220 points, or 0.7%, S&P 500 Futures traded 33 points, or 0.8% higher, and Nasdaq 100 Futures climbed 140 points, or 1.1%.
The main Wall Street indices closed lower Monday, continuing the weakness after Friday’s speech by Jerome Powell, in which the Fed chief made clear that the central bank aims to continue its rate hikes, even if they cause economic pain.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped a little over 184 points, or 0.6%, while the S&P 500 fell 0.7%, and the Nasdaq Composite closed 1% lower.
The Fed has already raised its benchmark rate by 0.75 percentage points at each of its last two meetings, and investors will be looking for further clues over the likelihood that it does so again in September.
Friday sees the release of the widely-watched monthly jobs report, but ahead of that the government’s JOLTs job openings report and the CB consumer confidence reading for August are both due at 10:00 ET (14:00 GMT).
It’s a light calendar for earnings, but results from electronics retailer Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) will be in the spotlight as investors look for the impact of inflation on discretionary spending.
Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) will also be in focus after the Chinese search engine beat quarterly earnings estimates, underpinned by demand for its cloud and artificial intelligence-powered offerings.
Oil prices weakened Tuesday, handing back some of the previous session’s hefty gains, as attention turns to the upcoming OPEC+ meeting and potential supply cuts.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia, and allies, a group called OPEC+, is set to meet on Sept. 5, and Saudi Arabia last week raised the possibility of cutting output to offset any major decline in crude rates.
The American Petroleum Institute is due to release data on U.S. crude inventories later in the session, and stockpiles are likely to have fallen 600,000 barrels last week.
By 07:00 ET, U.S. crude futures fell 2.3% to $94.81 a barrel, while the Brent contract fell 2.3% to $100.60. Both benchmarks posted gains of over 4% on Monday, the biggest increase in more than a month.
Additionally, gold futures fell 0.2% to $1,745.90/oz, while EUR/USD traded 0.4% higher at 1.0030.
