US pre-open: Futures trade lower following Presidents' Day break

20th Feb 2024 10:54

(Sharecast News) - Wall Street futures were in the red ahead of the bell on Tuesday as market participants prepared to return from the Presidents' Day long weekend.

As of 1300 GMT, Dow Jones futures were down 0.30%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 0.34% and 0.51% lower, respectively.

The Dow closed 145.13 points higher on Friday but still turned in its first lowing week in more than a month on the back of fears that the Federal Reserve may not look to cut interest rates at quite the pace investors had hoped to see.

Trade Nation's David Morrison said: There's not much point in talking about yesterday's moves in US stock index futures given the holiday-truncated session. But overnight there's been a cooling in positive sentiment and all the major US indices are lower. The S&P 500 has broken back below 5,000 for the first time since Wednesday, although it's far too early to say if this is the start of a bigger correction or just a mild bout of profit-taking.

"The yield on the 10-year Treasury note has fallen a few ticks, but it's only giving back a small fraction of its gains from last week. Bond yields flew higher as investors recalibrated the timing and size of rate cuts in 2024. This follows on from hawkish comments from FOMC members and an uptick in both CPI and PPI."

In the corporate space, Home Depot beat projections for its quarterly profit performance, even as sales came in lower than anticipated.

Elsewhere, retail giant Walmart revealed that it will acquire TV-maker Vizio for $2.3bn, while Capital One Financial traded lower in pre-market in the back of news that it will reportedly purchase Discover Financial Services in an all-stock deal worth $35.3bn.

No major macro news was slated for publication on Tuesday.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com