U.S. stock futures declined on Monday after a positive close on Friday. Futures of major benchmark indices were trading lower.
Tensions flared up at the Federal Reserve after the Chair Jerome Powell said on Sunday that the Department of Justice had threatened the central bank with “criminal indictment” over his testimony before Congress, relating to its building renovation costs. This marks a major escalation in tensions between President Donald Trump and the central bank.
On Friday, nonfarm payrolls increased by 50,000 in December, mostly unchanged from November’s downwardly revised 56,000 gain and slightly below expectations for 60,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday.
The U.S. Supreme Court did not issue a ruling Friday on President Trump’s sweeping global tariffs, as traders price in a 75% chance that the Supreme Court ultimately rules in favor of Trump’s tariffs.
Meanwhile, the 10-year Treasury bond yielded 4.19%, and the two-year bond was at 3.53%. The CME Group’s FedWatch tool‘s projections show markets pricing a 95% likelihood of the Federal Reserve leaving the current interest rates unchanged in January.
| Index | Performance (+/-) |
| Dow Jones | -0.78% |
| S&P 500 | -0.76% |
| Nasdaq 100 | -1.04% |
| Russell 2000 | -0.57% |
The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) and Invesco QQQ Trust ETF (NASDAQ:QQQ), which track the S&P 500 index and Nasdaq 100 index, respectively, were lower in premarket on Monday. The SPY was down 0.69% at $689.25, while the QQQ declined 0.95% to $620.77, according to Benzinga Pro data.
Stocks In Focus
Vistra
- Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) was 0.69% higher in premarket on Monday after it signed a 20-year nuclear power deal with Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META).
- Benzinga’s Edge Stock Rankings shows that VST maintains a weaker price trend over the short, medium, and long term, with a poor growth ranking. Additional information is available here.
Alibaba Group Holding
- Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (NYSE:BABA) rose 4.44% after its Cloud’s flagship Qwen series became the world’s most widely used open-source AI system, surpassing 700 million downloads on the Hugging Face platform as of January.
- It maintains a stronger price trend over the long term but a weak trend in the short and medium terms, with a solid value …