By Lisa Pauline Mattackal and Ankika Biswas
(Reuters) -Wall Street’s main indexes were on track for a listless open on Monday, in a week packed with crucial inflation readings, Congressional testimony from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and the start of the corporate earnings season.
Expectations for interest-rate cuts as early as September received a boost after Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report showed U.S. job growth slowed in June, the latest data to point to weakness in labor market conditions.
Investors, however, will seek clues for a clearer picture of the Fed’s likely monetary policy path for the year.
Traders now see a 69% chance of a 25-basis-point cut at the Fed’s September meeting, up from 60% a week ago, while expecting an overall reduction of about 50 bps for the year, according to CME’s FedWatch and LSEG data.
On the economic front, Thursday’s release of June’s consumer price index data will be closely watched to gauge whether price pressures are easing.
“The fact of the matter is the Fed has a dual mandate and their mandate is employment and inflation. Inflation is going down and unemployment is going up,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman at Great Hill Capital LLC.
“They now have cover to make a cut when they want to and signs point toward September.”
The and the Nasdaq continued to rally on Friday, closing at all-time highs as megacap tech stocks such as Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:) touched record peaks.
Tesla (NASDAQ:) fell 1.3% in premarket trading, after jumping to its highest level this year on Friday, while Nvidia (NASDAQ:) gained 0.7%.
Major banks including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:) and Wells Fargo are scheduled to kick off the second-quarter corporate earnings season on Friday.
Shares of JPMorgan slipped 0.2% in premarket trading after broad losses saw the S&P 500 banks index end Friday’s session down 1.6%.
Investors are focusing on earnings to see if a stratospheric jump in shares of just a handful of megacap stocks such as Nvidia can justify their pricey valuations.
Markets will also watch Powell’s semi-annual testimony before U.S. Senate and House committees on July 9 and 10 closely, as well as comments from several other Fed officials through the week.
At 8:43 a.m. ET, were up 65 points, or 0.16%, were up 4.25 points, or 0.08%, and were up 11 points, or 0.05%.
Paramount Global rose 2.9% after Sunday’s announcement that the company would merge with Skydance Media, which has offered $4.5 billion in cash or stock and an extra $1.5 billion to shore up Paramount’s balance sheet.
Planemaker Boeing (NYSE:) gained nearly 1% after it agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge and pay a fine of $243.6 million, to resolve a U.S. Justice Department investigation into two fatal 737 MAX crashes.