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US stock futures took a breather on Monday as Wall Street headed into a pivotal week dominated by the Federal Reserve’s final policy meeting of 2025.
Contracts on the S&P 500 (ES=F) hovered just above the flatline, while those on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) rose roughly 0.2% following a fourth straight closing gain for both. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) were also little changed.
Markets are on the lookout for risks to almost-total confidence that the Fed will cut interest rates at its two-day policy meeting, which starts on Tuesday. After a recent surge in optimism, traders now see an 88% probability of a cut in Wednesday’s decision, compared with 67% odds a month ago, per CME FedWatch.
A tame reading on September PCE consumer inflation kept that conviction alive on Friday, buoying appetite for risk and helping spur back-to-back weekly gains for the S&P 500 (^GSPC) and the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC).
The consensus has emerged despite a split among policymakers, in part over whether to focus on the labor market or inflation — which some at the Fed worry could still be too high. But backing from influential officials for the third cut of this year has cemented bets, though the prospects for 2026 are seen as less certain.
Given that, this week’s raft of economic data will be keenly eyed, with the labor market in the spotlight after a mixed bag of readings last week. The postponed October report on JOLTS job openings finally arrives on Tuesday to shed light on hiring activity, layoffs, and the pace at which workers are quitting.
On the earnings side, Oracle (ORCL) and Adobe (ADBE) quarterly results will be in focus on Wednesday, while Broadcom (AVGO) and Costco (COST) headline the proceedings on Thursday.
LIVE 7 updates
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Premarket trending tickers: Carvana, Marvell and Rivian
Carvana (CVNA) stock rose 8% before the bell on Monday following news on Friday that it will join the S&P 500 as part of the index’s quarterly rebalancing. CRH (CRH) also rose 7% during premarket trading.
Marvell Technology (MRVL) stock dropped 6% in premarket trading on Monday. Stephens analyst Melissa Roberts expected Marvell to join S&P 500 index (^GSPC); however, it was not included.
Rivian (RIVN) stock fell 3% during premarket trading. The fall follows news that the company will be recalling 35,000 vehicles due to a damaged seat belt pretensioner cable
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Buffett’s investment right-hand man to leave Berkshire for JPMorgan
Investment manager Todd Combs is leaving Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B) as Warren Buffett prepares his own departure at the end of the year.
Combs — seen as an investment protege of Buffett’s, per the FT — will take up a role at JPMorgan Chase (JPM), where he is already a board member. He is also stepping away as CEO of Geico, Berkshire said in a statement on Monday.
“[Combs] has resigned to accept an interesting and important job at JPMorgan,” Buffett said in the statement. “Todd made many great hires at GEICO and broadened its horizons. JPMorgan, as usually is the case, has made a good decision.”
Berkshire is reshuffling its leadership ranks as it adjusts to losing Combs. Geico COO Nancy Pierce will take over the helm at Geico, the insurance giant that is a key part of the Buffett-built conglomerate.
The news comes just weeks after Buffett said he was entering a “quiet period” before handing over the CEO position to Greg Abel in 2026.
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Research veteran Yardeni ends 15-year tech bet with underweight Mag 7 call
Bloomberg reports:
Yardeni Research now recommends effectively going underweight the Magnificent Seven megacap technology stocks versus the rest of the S&P 500 (^GSPC), expecting a shift in earnings growth ahead.
“We see more competitors coming for the juicy profit margins of the Magnificent 7,” and expect that the productivity and profit margins of the rest of the S&P 500 will be boosted by tech, said Wall Street research veteran Ed Yardeni.
He added that in effect, “every company is evolving into a technology company.”
The Magnificent 7 stocks were mixed in premarket trading on Monday, with Tesla Inc. (TSLA), Meta Platforms Inc. (META) and Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) underperforming peers.
The strategist said that it no longer makes sense to continue recommending overweighting the Information Technology and Communication Services sectors in an S&P 500 portfolio, after having kept that weighting since 2010, according to the research note Sunday. The firm recommends market-weighting of the two sectors by adding to overweights in financials and industrials, and overweighting health care.
The Magnificent 7 merits special caution as “they’re competing more aggressively against each other and they’ve got more competition coming out of nowhere” Yardeni said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday. In particular, he cited the recent doubts about OpenAI’s dominance as well as the emergence of China’s DeepSeek earlier this year.
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China’s trade surplus tope $1 trillion for the first time
China’s exports returned to growth in November after an unexpected contraction in October, pushing its trade surplus in dollar terms for 2025 past the $1 trillion mark for the first time, according to data released Monday.
The Associated Press reports:
Exports climbed 5.9% from a year earlier in November, while imports rose just under 2%. The customs data released on Monday also showed that shipments to the US dropped nearly 29% year-on-year.
… The nearly $1.08 trillion trade surplus for the first 11 months of this year is a record high, surpassing the $992 billion surplus for all of 2024, based on official data compiled by FactSet.
While exports from China to the U.S. have fallen for most of the year, shipments have surged to other destinations, including Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa and the European Union.
A year-long trade truce between China and the U.S. was reached at a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in late October in South Korea. The U.S. has lowered its tariffs on China, and China has promised to halt its export controls related to rare earths.
“It’s likely that November exports have yet to fully reflect the tariff cut, which should feed through in the coming months,” ING Bank chief economist for Greater China Lynn Song wrote in a report.
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IBM is closing in on $11 billion deal for Confluent amid AI pivot: WSJ
Shares of Confluent (CFLT) surged around 30% in premarket trading after a report that IBM (IBM) is in advanced talks to buy the data infrastructure company.
The deal could be announced as soon as Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported, but noted that the discussions could still collapse.
Customers use Confluent’s platform to process huge streams of real-time data, as used in AI models. If completed, the acquisition would be one of IBM’s biggest deals in recent times, and would play into its push into AI. Shares of IBM were little changed in early Monday morning trading.
Reuters reports:
Confluent holds a market capitalization of about $8.09 billion, as per LSEG-compiled data, while New York-based IBM is valued at roughly $287.84 billion.
Investors grew cautious after IBM reported slower growth in its core cloud software business in October, raising concerns about the company’s ability to maintain momentum. Analysts said IBM will need stronger software performance to keep overall growth on track.
IBM’s acquisition strategy remains a key focus for meeting investors’ expectations. Last year, the company bought HashiCorp in a $6.4 billion deal, expanding its cloud-based offerings to capture rising demand fueled by artificial intelligence.
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Bond traders defy Fed rate cuts, sparking heated debate on Wall Street
Bloomberg reports:
The bond market’s reaction to the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate cuts has been highly unusual. By some measures, a disconnect like this, with Treasury yields climbing as the central bank lowers rates, hasn’t been seen since the 1990s.
What the divergence indicates is a matter of heated debate. Opinions are all over the place, from the bullish (a sign of confidence that recession will be averted) to the more neutral (a return to pre-2008 market norms) to the favorite culprit of the so-called bond vigilantes (investors are losing confidence the US will ever rein in the constantly swelling national debt).
But one thing is clear: the bond market isn’t buying President Donald Trump’s idea that faster rate cuts will send bond yields sliding down and, in turn, slash the rates on mortgages, credit cards and other types of loans.
With Trump soon able to replace Chair Jerome Powell with his own nominee, on top of everything else is the risk of the Fed squandering its credibility by caving to political pressure to ease policy more aggressively — which could backfire by fanning already elevated inflation and pushing yields higher.
… The Fed started pulling its benchmark rate down from a more than two-decade high in September 2024 and has since cut it by 1.5 percentage points to a range of 3.75% to 4%. Traders see another quarter-point cut after the next meeting on Wednesday as virtually assured and are pricing in two more such moves next year, which would bring its rate to around 3%.
Yet, key Treasury yields — which serve as the main baseline for the borrowing costs paid by American consumers and corporations — haven’t come down at all. Ten-year yields (^TNX) have risen nearly half a percentage point to 4.1% since the Fed started easing policy and 30-year yields are up over 0.8 percentage point.
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Silver hovers just below record as exchange funds boost the precious metals price
Bloomberg reports:
