Stock futures pointed lower Wednesday ahead of the latest batch of bank earnings reports and an inflation reading, while safe-haven gold and silver futures surged to fresh record highs.
Nasdaq 100, S&P 500, and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures declined a respective 0.6%, 0.4%, and 0.3%.
Major stock indexes closed lower yesterday, with the Dow shedding 400 points, as investors digested a consumer inflation reading that matched expectations and bank earnings season kicked off with a mixed report from JPMorgan Chase (JPM), whose shares declined more than 4%.
Prices of precious metals surged Wednesday, with gold futures hitting an all-time high of nearly $4,650 an ounce and silver crossing the $90-an-ounce threshold for the first time. Gold was up almost 1% to $4,640 in recent trading, while silver surged 4.5% to $90.25 after reaching as high as $91.37 earlier.
Traders are awaiting the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ delayed Producer Price Index report for November, which is set to be released at 8:30 a.m. ET. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal expect wholesale prices to have risen 0.3% from September, the last monthly reading before the U.S. government shutdown. Ahead of the reading, the 10-year Treasury yield, which influences interest rates on a variety of commercial and consumer loans, fell below 4.16% from Tuesday’s close above 4.18%.
Financial stocks declined for the second straight day Tuesday after President Donald Trump over the weekend suggested capping credit card interest rates at 10%. Payment processors Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA) were among the biggest S&P 500 decliners yesterday, with shares down 4.5% and 3.8%, respectively, but both inched higher in premarket trading Wednesday.
Banking giants Bank of America (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Citigroup (C) were slated to report fiscal 2025 fourth-quarter results before the bell.
Shares of Nvidia (NVDA) slipped less than 1% after the Trump administration approved the exporting of its H200 AI chips to China but said the world’s most valuable public company must meet new security requirements first.
Netflix (NFLX) stock rose about 2% following reports that the streaming giant was preparing to make its $72 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD) HBO Max streaming service and studios all-cash, instead of a mix of cash and stock. Paramount Skydance (PSKY) has made a hostile all-cash offer of $77.9 billion for all of WBD, whose shares edged lower before the bell. Paramount shares were little changed.
West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. crude oil benchmark, rose about 1% to $61.70 a barrel.
Bitcoin was trading around $95,100, up from the day’s low of roughly $94,100. The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the value of the greenback against a basket of foreign currencies, ticked 0.1% lower to 99.02.