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US stock futures traded mixed on Monday amid fading optimism for interest-rate cuts, as investors looked ahead to Nvidia earnings to test the health of the AI trade.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) slipped roughly 0.2%, while S&P 500 futures (ES=F) were broadly flat. Contracts on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) rose 0.3%, buoyed by a jump in Tesla (TSLA) stock.
Stocks are starting the week on the back foot as the prospect of higher-for-longer rates holds post-election bullishness in check. The S&P 500 has reversed half of its Trump-fueled rally after sharp weekly losses for the major gauges, led by tech.
Signs of a robust economy, combined with comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, have prompted investors to downsize expectations for rate cuts. After the big macro and political events of recent days, the week brings few economic releases seen as likely to reset those calculations.
Read more: What the Fed rate cut means for bank accounts, CDs, loans, and credit cards
Given that, eyes are now on Nvidia's results on Wednesday for insight into the strength of the AI trade, which has helped drive the S&P 500's gains over the past year. Production of its flagship Blackwell chip is in focus, especially after The Information reported the next-generation AI chip has run into problems with overheating. Nvidia shares were down over 2% in premarket trading.
Elsewhere in tech, EV maker Tesla's shares rose almost 7% in the wake of a Bloomberg report that President-elect Donald Trump's team is looking to ease US rules for self-driving vehicles.
Wall Street continues to monitor Trump's picks for his cabinet, after his choice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr for top health official rattled vaccine stocks. The incoming president has named Brendan Carr, a critic of Big Techs such as Meta and Apple, as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The wait is now on to learn who will win the frenzied race to become Trump's Treasury Secretary.
Meanwhile, bitcoin (BTC-USD) — a key Trump trade — has rebounded from its biggest retreat since the election at the weekend. The cryptocurrency was trading above $90,000 early on Monday.
LIVE 2 updates
Goldman weighs in on potential Trump tariff impact
Wall Street's 2025 outlook reports are trickling in, and one keyword search I am doing of course is tariffs as anything imposed on China or Europe by Trump could impact the economy and the outlook for Fed policy.
Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius is out this morning downplaying the potential economic impact of tariffs. Hatzius reasons tariffs would be more of a one-time hit to growth and inflation, and won't derail further rate cuts from the Fed in 2025.
Says Hatzius:
"The tariffs in our baseline would raise core personal consumption expenditure inflation by about 0.3-0.4 percentage points next year, leaving it at 2.4% in December 2025. Tariffs would have only a moderate and one-time effect that should not prevent inflation from continuing to fall, and their impact should be fairly easily identifiable in the component details, at least for tariffs on consumer goods. For all of these reasons, the impact on inflation need not be particularly significant for monetary policy, though this could change if the White House imposes a 10% universal tariff, which would push inflation just above 3%."
Let Nvidia mania begin
To say expectations on Nvidia (NVDA) are sky high into its Wednesday earnings print is an understatement.
They are super, extra sky high!
Nvidia has outperformed the S&P 500 by 172% year to date and 5% in the last month, points out EvercoreISI analyst Mark Lipacis. The stock trades on a forward P/E multiple of 37 times, a 54% premium to the S&P 500.
The expectations have Wall Street hedging their bets a bit on Nvidia into the release.
"We see the near-term risks as largely balanced and we are buyers of Nvidia heading into its F3Q earnings report scheduled for Wednesday. Positive set-up indicators from accelerating bookings at cloud service providers, an upward bias on hyper-scale capital expenditures, as well as our view that near-term estimates will increase post the earnings call. Negative set-up indicators include decelerating revenue growth, our read of buy-side expecting a beat/raise print, and Nvidia outperforming the S&P 500 by 172% year to date and by 5% over the past month," Lipacis said in a client note this morning.
I touched on Nvidia's valuation in a recent chat on my Opening Bid podcast with Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya (video below). Arya makes some good points on how Nvidia's stock tends to trade around certain valuation levels.
