© Reuters
By Scott Kanowsky
Investing.com — U.S. stock futures pointed only marginally lower on Monday, with investors eyeing debt ceiling talks in Washington, earnings from major tech companies, and a fresh batch of key economic data this week.
At 06:50 ET (11:50 GMT), the contract was down 9 points or 0.03%, while traded 4 points or 0.10% lower, and dipped by 9 points or 0.08%.
The main averages closed higher on Friday, but the ended a choppy week lower. The broad-based index gained 73 points, or 1.9%, in the prior session, but lost 0.7% over the holiday-shortened four-day trading week. However, the tech-heavy increased by 288 points or 2.66%, to bring its weekly increase to 0.6%.
Stocks were given a lift mid-session from comments by Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller supporting a slowdown in the central bank’s recently aggressive monetary policy tightening campaign. That optimism was tempered by economic figures last week that showed a bigger-than-expected fall in retail and wholesale prices in December, leading to worries about the state of the U.S. consumer despite hopes that a recent spike in may have peaked.
Meanwhile, a high-stakes deadlock is looming in Washington after the U.S. government hit its $31.4 trillion borrowing limit last week. A row is now brewing between hardline Republicans and President Joe Biden’s Democrats over raising the country’s debt ceiling.
House Republicans want cuts to government spending before they will approve a higher ceiling; a similar demand in 2011 prompted S&P to cut the U.S. credit rating for the first time and caused chaos in financial markets. The White House has called lifting the debt ceiling a non-negotiable issue.
Leaders said over the weekend that they are working to prepare a plan to avert the crisis by possibly changing the debt ceiling from a fixed dollar amount to a percentage of U.S. economic production.
Elsewhere, the U.S. is scheduled to publish a first estimate of fourth quarter on Thursday with analysts expecting the economy to have expanded by an annualized 2.6%, after 3.2% in the third quarter. The economic calendar also includes data on , , and on Thursday and the index on Friday.
In corporate news, earnings results in the coming week will test the recent bounce in technology stocks amid questions over whether mega-cap companies can increase revenue and profits while cutting costs in a challenging macroeconomic backdrop.
Microsoft (NASDAQ:), the second biggest U.S. company by market value, reports on Tuesday followed by Elon Musk’s Tesla (NASDAQ:) on Wednesday, and Intel (NASDAQ:) on Thursday.
Monday’s movers pre-market included Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:) and Qualcomm (NASDAQ:), which were both boosted by a ratings upgrade at Barclays. But the bank downgraded Applied Materials (NASDAQ:) over concerns about semiconductor capital equipment stocks, causing shares in the company to decline.
Salesforce (NYSE:) jumped after hedge fund Elliott Investment Management announced that it would take a large stake in the big enterprise software player.
Streaming music service Spotify (NYSE:) rose on a Bloomberg report that it will slash jobs as soon as this week, following similar moves by tech peers like Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:), Amazon (NASDAQ:) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:).
Attention in oil markets is honing in on the outlook for a recovery in demand in China as the country reopens from strict COVID-19 measures, as well as risks to Russian production in 2023. By 06:50 ET, futures traded 0.51% higher at $82.06 a barrel, while the contract increased by 0.62% to $88.17.
Additionally, moved down 0.11% to $1,926.05/oz, while rose 0.23% to 1.0880.
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