At least seven Fed officials including St Louis Fed president Alberto Musalem are expected to speak later in the day.
Traders currently expect at least two 25-basis-point rate cuts from the US Federal Reserve by the end of the year, with the first expected in September, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Yesterday, Fed officials flagged the ramifications of the latest downgrade of the US government’s sovereign credit rating and uneasy market conditions.
“The Fed is trying to not have (tariffs) influence what they do and they’ve said so,” said Thomas Martin, senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments.
“They certainly don’t want to raise (interest rates), and so standing pat is a pretty good thing to do,” Martin said.
At 8.26am, Dow E-minis were down 5 points, or 0.01%, S&P 500 E-minis were down 13.25 points, or 0.22%, and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were down 74.25 points, or 0.34%.
Among top premarket movers, retailer Home Depot gained 2.3% after beating Wall Street estimates for first-quarter sales.
Amer Sports jumped 10.2% after raising its 2025 revenue forecast.
UnitedHealth continued its recovery after hitting its lowest level since April 2020 last week and rose 2.7%.
Most megacap and growth stocks were tracking lower, with Nvidia and Amazon.com down about 0.4% each.
Stocks initially fell yesterday and government bond yields jumped as investors assessed the implications of Moody’s downgrading the US sovereign credit rating to “Aa1” from a pristine “Aaa”, citing the government’s US$36-trillion outstanding debt and interest.
Long-dated Treasury yields held steady today, with those on the 10-year Treasury note last at 4.48%.
Concerns around mounting US debt remained in focus, with a vote on Trump’s sweeping tax-cut bill in the House of Representatives expected sometime this week.
US stocks have had a solid month so far, with the S&P 500 now more than 17% higher than its April lows, when global markets were jolted by Trump’s reciprocal tariffs on most trading partners.
A pause in the tariffs, a temporary trade truce between the US and China and some tame inflation data have pushed equities higher, although the S&P 500 is still about 3% away from its record highs.
Preliminary readings of the May purchasing managers index are due later in the week.
AI-darling Nvidia is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on May 28.