U.S. stock futures held steady Monday, pausing after the S&P 500 advanced for a 16th of 18 weeks to hit a new peak.
What is going on
-
Futures Dow Jones Industrial Average YM00,
-0.21%
fell 75 points, or 0.2%, to 39067. -
Futures S&P 500 ES00,
-0.13%
fell 2 points, or 0%, to 5144. -
Futures Nasdaq-100 NQ00,
-0.07%
increased 26 points, or 0.1%, to 18364.
On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA rose 91 points, or 0.23%, to 39087, the S&P 500 SPX rose 41 points, or 0.8%, to 5137, and the Nasdaq Composite COMP gained 183 points, or 1.14%, to 16275. , with the S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq Composite closing at a record.
The S&P 500 rose 1% last week and has gained 8% this year.
What drives the markets
There is a packed list of events scheduled this week as investors look to see if anything can derail the rally. Fed Chair Jerome Powell will be on Capitol Hill this week for two days of congressional testimony, while the nonfarm payrolls report is released on Friday.
“Bears appear to remain in capitulation mode, nervous investors appear to be finding confidence in staying in stocks, and the indebted public appears to be learning to accept the likelihood that the Fed has no plans to cut rates anytime soon with last year’s PCE deflator data week for January shows inflation still sticky and the central bank’s inflation target rate still some distance away,” said John Stoltzfus, chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer Asset Management.
Bank of America was the latest Wall Street firm to raise its price target, now posting a year-end level of 5,400 for the S&P 500. The increase, however, was accompanied by a warning that the likelihood of a short-term pullback is high.
It’s not just a rally in US stocks: Bitcoin BTCUSD,
rose above $65,000 and the Nikkei 225 JP:NIK surpassed 40,000, while gold GC00,
slipped lower after closing Friday at a record high.