U.S. stock futures rose modestly Wednesday morning as Wall Street looked to recover from a downbeat start to the week and awaited minutes from the Federal Reserve’s December policy meeting for clues on the central bank’s next rate decision.
Futures tied to the S&P 500 (^GSPC) advanced 0.3%, while futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) added 60 points, or 0.2%. Contracts on the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) were up by 0.5%. The rebound Wednesday morning follows a bleak start to 2023 trading as many of last year’s pressures follow investors into the new year. On Tuesday, all three major averages closed lower.
U.S. Treasury yields dropped as traders awaited Fed minutes. The benchmark 10-year note fell 10 basis points to yield around 3.69% as of 7:30 a.m. ET, while the 2-year yield was down about 6 basis points to 4.34%.
The U.S. dollar index also fell. And oil prices continued to sink, with West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures — the U.S. benchmark — futures dropping 3.2% to $74.50 per barrel.
All eyes were on Tesla (TSLA) again Wednesday after shares plunged 12% in the first trading day of 2023 Tuesday — the biggest drop in more than two years and erasing all the recovery gains made in the final three sessions of 2022 last week. Shares rose 1.6% pre-market on Wednesday.
The electric carmaker earlier this week reported vehicle production and delivery figures for the fourth quarter that disappointed Wall Street, piling on another woe for investors already weighing concerns over production at Tesla’s China plant and CEO Elon Musk’s management of Twitter.
Shares of Alibaba Group (BABA) soared more than 7% before the open after billionaire co-founder Jack Ma won approval from Chinese regulators to raise 10.5 billion yuan — or $1.5 billion — for subsidiary Ant Group’s consumer finance business. Other U.S.-listed Chinese stocks also gained.
Salesforce (CRM) on Wednesday announced restructuring plans that included cutting about 10% of its workforce and closing some of its offices, joining a growing list of technology companies laying off workers to cut costs after overhiring during the post-pandemic boom in 2021. Shares advanced 2.8% in pre-market trading.
Investors are in for a busy week of economic data this shortened first trading week of the year. Minutes from the FOMC’s December meeting are due out at 2:00 p.m. ET. The readout is likely to show the thinking behind the central bank’s “slower but higher” regime after Fed Chair Powell last month signaled that he and colleagues will switch to smaller rate hikes but likely a higher terminal rate.
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, and ISM manufacturing data are due out Wednesday morning, and the Labor Department December jobs report is set for release Friday.
Financial markets logged their worst year since 2008 on Friday, as aggressive central bank actions to quell inflation and war in Eastern Europe battered stocks and bonds. Even as investors turn the page on 2022, much of Wall Street expects more pain remains ahead.
“What we’ve picked up from our modeling is there’s a bit of a regime change taking place under the surface, and what we mean by that is 2022 was all about the Fed as they tightened financial conditions to fight inflation” Huw Roberts, head of analytics at Quant Insight told Yahoo Finance Live on Tuesday.
“But what we’re picking up on now, is more sensitivity to the real economy – greater sensitivity to growth, to inflation expectations, to industrial metals, and to the credit cycle – and what that says to us is markets will be spending the early part of 2023 really getting nervous about a hard landing.”
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Alexandra Semenova is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @alexandraandnyc
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