Market Snapshot: U.S. stock futures point to more caution after Russian turmoil amid economic worries

United States

U.S. stock futures were a touch weaker Monday, extending last week’s pullback as the volatile weekend in Russia pushed safe assets including gold and bonds higher.

  • Dow Jones Industrial Average futures YM00, -0.04% fell 32 points, or 0.1%, to 33945.
  • S&P 500 futures ES00, -0.10% dropped 7 points, or 0.2%, to 4382.
  • Nasdaq 100 futures NQ00, -0.19% decreased 37 points, or 0.2%, to 15022.

On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.65% fell 219 points, or 0.65%, to 33727, the S&P 500 SPX, -0.77% declined 34 points, or 0.77%, to 4348, and the Nasdaq Composite COMP, -1.01% dropped 138 points, or 1.01%, to 13493.

What’s driving markets

The S&P 500 fell last week for the first time in five weeks, and the mood wasn’t any brighter following Wagner Group’s aborted mutiny in Russia.

Gold futures GC00, +0.62% rose and the yield on the 10-year Treasury TMUBMUSD10Y, 3.693% fell as Yevgeny Prigozhin was reportedly headed for Belarus after his troops had headed to Moscow in a seeming challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Just days after looking set for a period of steady decline as the bearish factors for gold outweighed the bullish ones, uncertainty over how the Ukrainian war will now play out and the prospect of an internal battle within Russia have sharply reversed gold’s fortunes,” said Rupert Rowling, market analyst at Kinesis Money.

The dollar USDJPY, -0.42% meanwhile slipped by the Japanese yen as minutes from the last Bank of Japan meeting showed worries that inflation will moderate back to its 2% target.

Worries about the global economy continued after a sharp drop in the German Ifo business climate index for June.

Tesla stock TSLA, -3.03% slipped in premarket trade as the electric car maker’s rating was downgraded by Goldman Sachs to neutral.