Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the opening bell on November 13, 2024, in New York City.
Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images
U.S. stock futures fell on Friday morning as the postelection rally wavered and the Federal Reserve signaled it was in no hurry to keep cutting interest rates.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 156 points, or 0.36%. S&P 500 futures slipped about 0.51%, while Nasdaq 100 futures shed 0.76%.
Shares of Applied Materials, which makes equipment for the chip industry, fell more than 8% in early trading after the company gave weak guidance for revenue in the current quarter. Domino’s Pizza jumped more than 7% after Berkshire Hathaway announced a new stake in the pizza chain.
That action follows a losing day on Wall Street as the postelection upswing continued to show signs of fizzling. The Dow fell more than 200 points on Thursday, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite each slipped about 0.6%.
Stocks took a leg down Thursday afternoon after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said during an event in Dallas that the central bank wasn’t “in a hurry” to cut interest rates. That comes after the Fed cut the borrowing cost last week. Markets have trimmed expectations for another cut at the Fed’s December policy meeting and are now assigning a roughly 62% probability of a quarter percentage point reduction, per the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool, down from 82.5% before Powell’s remarks on Thursday. That’s compared to a 37% probability for holding rates steady next month.
The three major indexes are tracking to end the week lower, giving up some gains seen during last week’s climb on the back of Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election. The Nasdaq Composite has dropped 0.9% this week, while the S&P 500 and Dow have shed 0.8% and 0.5%, respectively. The Dow closed above 44,000 for the first time ever on Monday.
“Investors are catching their breath and evaluating whether the advance has merit,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research. “We really don’t see anything on the horizon right now to upend stocks, but investors are always sort of looking around to see what could cause the trend to end.”
Shares of Tesla, thought to be a major election beneficiary because of CEO Elon Musk’s backing of President-elect Donald Trump, are off by 3% this week after rocketing higher 29% last week.
Investors will watch Friday for economic data on retail sales, import prices and industrial production. That caps a busy week for economic data that was punctuated by releases of closely watched inflation gauges focused on consumers and producers.
