Stock Market Today: Dow Set to Open Up After U.S.-China Trade Progress
Stocks were on course to open higher on Monday after top Chinese and U.S. negotiators sounded positive on their latest talks.
The progress bolstered hopes that President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will be able to sign off on a trade agreement between the world’s two largest economies later this week.
Futures tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 321 points, or 0.7%. S&P 500 futures gained 0.9%, and contracts tied to the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 added 1.2%.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note ticked up 2 basis points to 4.04%. The dollar traded flat against a weighted basket of its peers, and gold dropped 1.3% to $4,083 an ounce. Bitcoin was up 3.6% to $115,728 over the past 24 hours.
All three of the major indexes finished last week at record closing highs, lifted by a cooler-than-expected consumer inflation report. They looked set to climb again on Monday after negotiators over the weekend hammered out the framework for a trade deal between Washington and Beijing.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that said framework ought to pave the way for a discussion between Trump and Xi, who are set to meet in person in South Korea on Thursday.
“Markets are in a buoyant mood this morning as U.S. and China officials indicated that they have largely aligned a deal,” Deutsche Bank economist Peter Sidorov said.
The Trump-Xi meeting “should give a clearer sense whether this represents a genuine stabilization in US-China trade relations or only a return to the uneasy trade truce in place before the rhetoric escalated earlier this month,” he added.
Trade won’t be the only focus for investors this week. It’ll be a busy five days on the corporate reporting front, too, with five of the Magnificent Seven Big Tech companies–Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Apple, and Amazon–all set to post their quarterly earnings.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is widely expected to cut interest rates by a quarter-point on Wednesday, although Wall Street will probably be more interested in Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference rather than the decision itself, as that could give the market a better sense of where borrowing costs are headed.