U.S. stocks were set to retreat on Tuesday ahead of the first of two days of testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on the state of the government’s efforts to limit the economic damage from the COVID-19 pandemic.
How are stock benchmarks performing?
- Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average YM00,
-0.39% YMM21,-0.39% fell 159 points, or 0.5%, to reach 32,460. - S&P 500 futures fell 19 points to reach 3,911, a decline of 0.5%.
- Nasdaq-100 futures NQ00,
+0.03% NQM21,+0.03% were at 13,031.75, off 40 points or 0.3%.
On Monday, the Dow DJIA,
What’s driving the market?
Stocks looked set to relinquish some of Monday’s gains as investors brace for testimony from Powell and Yellen starting at 12 p.m. Eastern Time in front of the House Financial Services Committee, with the hopes of gleaning more insights about how regulators will respond to a rapid economic recovery and its potential to ignite long-dormant inflation.
In prepared remarks released on Monday, Powell said that the U.S. economy has recovered more quickly than generally expected “and looks to be strengthening,” but cautioned that the comeback is far from complete.
‘Today, the overall market appetite will depend on the outcome of the testimony of Fed Chair Jerome Powell and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen,” wrote Charalambos Pissouros, senior market analyst at JFP Group.
Powell has tried to communicate a stance that underscores the central bank’s desire to keep benchmark interest rates down while the labor market recovers from the impact of lockdown measures implemented to limit the spread of the coronavirus but some critics fear that policy makers may lose control of that narrative.
“The released statement last night reinforced the Fed’s optimism about the glide path of the current economic rebound, but also reiterated that the recovery was in the foothills, and support was set to remain for the foreseeable future,” wrote Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK, in a note.
Tuesday also marks the anniversary of the pandemic lows on March 23, 2020, when all of the major stock benchmarks put in their bear-market lows before staging a powerful rebound, aided at least partly by a cocktail of fiscal spending, monetary-policy intervention and a trove of retail traders stuck at home speculating on an eventual stock-market recovery.
Thus far, the rollout of vaccines has helped to mitigate some of the contagion but recovery from the pandemic has come in fits and starts, with Europe showing signs of another outcropping of infections.
Indeed, rising COVID-19 cases in Europe have fueled recent lockdown extensions in Germany, France and Italy.
The global tally for the coronavirus-borne illness rose above 123.7 million on Tuesday, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University, with the U.S. accounting for 24% of cases at 29.8 million.
On the vaccine front, federal health officials said early Tuesday that results of a U.S. trial of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine may have included “outdated information,” providing an “incomplete view of the efficacy data.
Looking ahead, investors will also be watching for comments from other Fed members including St. Louis Fed President Jim Bullard, who will speak at the London School of Economics at 9 a.m., Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin will speak at 11 a.m., while Fed Gov. Lael Brainard, New York Fed President John Williams and Bullard will speak later in the afternoon.
In economic reports, data on new home sales for February are due at 10 a.m., while a report on manufacturing conditions in the Richmond, Va. area is due at the same time.
Which stocks are in focus?
- GameStop GME,
-2.89% on Tuesday after the close is expected to report earnings per share of $1.35, or $88 million, on $2.211 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter, according to the consensus estimates of six analysts surveyed by FactSet. - Microsoft Corp. MSFT,
+2.45% is in discussions to purchase videogame-focused chat platform Discord for more than $10 billion, according to a report by Bloomberg News.
