U.S. stock futures pointed to muted gains for major indexes ahead of a busy week of central-bank decisions in major economies.
Futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.2% Monday, after the benchmark gauge closed last week at its67th record high of 2021. Contracts for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which sits just shy of an all-time high, also ticked up 0.2%, as did futures for the technology-heavy Nasdaq-100.
In the bond market, the yield on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes ticked up to 1.492% Monday from 1.487% Friday. Yields move in the opposite direction to bond prices.
Investors are sitting tight ahead of a monetary-policy decision by the Federal Reserve and announcements from the Bank of England, European Central Bank and Bank of Japan later in the week. The Fed is expected to accelerate the pace at which it is paring its bond-buying program and to signal that it will raise interest rates next year to tap the brakes on inflation. Data published Friday showed consumer prices increased in November at the fastest annual rate since 1982.
Gregory Perdon, co-chief investment officer at Arbuthnot Latham,said he expects stocks to keep rising even as the Fed tightens monetary policy.
“The classic textbook would be rates up, stocks down,” Mr. Perdon said. “The reality is there’s so much liquidity out there, there’s so much demand to get a return on assets that ultimately we’re going to have to have a much…more aggressive tightening to knock stocks.”
Commodity prices rose. Brent-crude futures, the benchmark in international energy markets, ticked up 0.5% to $75.53 a barrel. Prices snapped a six-week losing streak Friday, recovering some ground shed when the Omicron variant threatened to hit oil demand.
European natural-gas prices jumped more than 8% Monday. Supplies of gas, a key heating and power-generation fuel in Europe, are well below their recent average for the time of year, raising concerns stockpiles will run low as cold weather lifts demand. U.S. natural-gas futures rose 1.9% to $4 per million British thermal units.
Turkey’s lira slumped 4% to trade at 14.46 to the dollar ahead of an expected rate cut by the central bank on Thursday. The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey has bowed to pressure from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to lower borrowing costs this year in the face of rapid inflation, hitting the currency hard.
Overseas stock markets were mixed. The Stoxx Europe 600 edged up 0.1%, led higher by shares of basic-resources, auto and oil-and-gas companies. Among individual movers,Vifor Pharmajumped more than 15% after the Swiss pharmaceutical firm said it was in talks to be bought by Australia’s CSL.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.7%, the Shanghai Composite Index added 0.4% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 0.2%.
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