A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., on Monday, Aug. 23, 2021.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Stock futures were holding steady in overnight trading on Sunday as investors braced for the last week of a volatile September.
Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 20 points. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures were both little changed.
Wall Street is coming off a roller-coaster week amid a slew of concerns from the debt crisis of China’s real estate giant Evergrande to the Federal Reserve’s signal on rollback in monetary stimulus, and to Beijing’s crackdown on cryptocurrencies. Still, major averages managed to wipe out steep losses earlier in the week and eke out small gains.
The blue-chip Dow finished the week 0.6% higher, breaking a three-week losing streak. The S&P 500 rose 0.5% on the week, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite edged up 0.02% last week.
“Equity markets continue to reflect a tug-of-war between bulls and bears,” Mark Hackett, chief of investment research at Nationwide, said in a note. “The market recovery indicated that the buy-the-dip mentality remains.”
So far, September is living up to its reputation for volatility and weakness as major averages have all registered modest losses. The S&P 500 is off by 1.5%, on track to post its first negative month since January. The broad equity benchmark is about 2% off its record high from Sept. 2. The Dow is down 1.6% for the month, while the Nasdaq is down 1.4%.
“We continue to exercise caution in the near term, especially as we enter the seasonally weakest part of the year (late September — mid-October),” Larry Adam, CIO at Raymond James, said in a note. “However, given continued robust economic growth, our bias is to hold existing equity exposure or add opportunistically on weakness.”
Investors are monitoring the progress in Washington as lawmakers try to prevent a government shutdown, a default on U.S. debt and the possible collapse of President Joe Biden’s sweeping economic agenda.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that she expects the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill to pass this week, but voting on the legislation may be pushed back from its original Monday timeline.
Congress must pass a new budget by the end of September to avoid a shutdown, and lawmakers must also figure out a way to increase or suspend the debt ceiling in October before the U.S. would default on its debt for the first time.
Elsewhere, bitcoin rebounded about 2% to $43,454 after dropping 5% on Friday. The sell-off came after China’s central bank declared all cryptocurrency-related activities illegal.
