Stock futures are trading below fair value ahead of a busy week on Wall Street, with Apple earnings, President Donald Trump's first State of the Union address, and the last Fed meeting for Chair Janet Yellen on tap. Today, though, traders are digesting a tepid rise in consumer spending last month, along with a 12-year low in the saving rate. Separately, the core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index, a key measure of inflation, edged up a modest 0.2% in December. Against this backdrop, Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI), S&P 500 Index (SPX), and Nasdaq-100 Index (NDX) are all set to retreat from Friday's record highs.
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There was little buying in Asian equities today, with Chinese benchmarks experiencing notable weakness. Specifically, the Shanghai Composite fell 1% and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong tumbled 0.6%, in a possible round of profit-taking. Investors may also have been spooked by regulatory concerns, after a number of Chinese banks were hit with fines. These headwinds spread to Japan's Nikkei, with the index ending down 0.01%, though South Korea's Kospi managed a 0.9% advance.
It's so far been a mixed trading session in Europe. Helping to buoy the major indexes throughout the region is a rally in tech stocks, namely chipmakers, thanks to a strong financial update from Apple supplier AMS AG. Drugmakers are also in focus after Sanofi SA hit the M&A trail yet again, announcing plans to buy Ablynx NV. As such, the FTSE 100 was up 0.2% at last check and the French CAC 40 was flirting with a 0.1% lead, but the German DAX was down 0.1%.