Traders work at the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 17, 2024.
NYSE
U.S. stock futures fell on Friday with big selling returning to Wall Street after a one-day respite. The latest reading of the Federal Reserve’s favorite inflation gauge was due Friday morning.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 297 points, or about 0.6%. S&P 500 futures shed around 1.1%. Nasdaq 100 futures dropped 1.7% with tech shares in the premarket seeing the biggest declines.
Shares of Tesla, a big winner of 2024 and in the post-election run, was off by 5% in premarket trading. Nvidia, the star of the bull market, fell 3%. Palantir and Dell shares were also lower.
Also weighing on sentiment was the failure Thursday night of a Trump-endorsed House Republican measure to fund the government for three months and avert a government shutdown. Without a deal to fund the government and a bill that’s passed the House and Senate and has been signed into law, a partial shutdown is slated to start Friday night.
During Thursday’s trading session, the Dow eked out a 15-point gain and ended a 10-day losing streak — its longest since 1974. The small gain came a day after the Dow plunged 1,100 points on Wednesday. The Dow is down 3.4% on the week, headed for its worst weekly performance since March 2023. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are each off around 3% on the week.
Investors are now looking ahead to November’s reading of the personal consumption expenditures price index – the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation metric. The report takes on even more significance after Fed Chair Jerome Powell indicated this week that the Fed would cut interest rates fewer times next year in part because of stubborn inflation. The Fed’s outlook was the catalyst for the market’s plunge on Wednesday.
Analysts polled by Dow Jones expect the PCE price Index to rise 0.2% on the month and show an annual reading of 2.5%. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, is also expected to rise 0.2% on a monthly basis and 2.9% annually, above the Fed’s 2% target.
“Whatever the reaction is going to be, it’s probably going to be more severe one way or the other than it would have been prior to seeing the Fed really increase those expectations,” Mike Dickson, head of research and quantitative strategies at Horizon Investments, told CNBC.
The 10-year Treasury yield popped above 4.5% this week, also weighing on equities.
– CNBC’s Sarah Min and Christina Wilkie contributed to this report.