Tonight’s Highlights | Rate-Cut Hopes Reignite Market Confidence – All Three Major U.S. Index Futures Climb

In Monday’s pre-market session, the three major U.S. index futures are all higher, with Nasdaq 100 futures up around 1%. Major European indices are also broadly rising.

 

(Source: Investing.com)

 

After New York Fed President John Williams hinted at a possible December rate cut, markets began a strong rebound on Friday, and the upward momentum looks set to continue into Monday.

 

According to CME FedWatch data based on interest-rate futures, the latest figures on Monday show the probability of a Fed rate cut in December has climbed to around 75% — up from roughly 40% before Williams’ comments and slightly higher than Friday’s 71%.

 

Fed Governor Christopher Waller said on Monday that he supports a rate cut in December, noting that September employment figures may be revised lower and that the clustering of data releases is not a good sign. January will be challenging, with a large batch of data coming out to determine whether another cut is needed, and the Fed will need to assess meeting by meeting.

 

U.S. markets will be closed on Thursday for Thanksgiving and will close three hours early on Friday. With trading volume expected to thin out over the coming days and few major catalysts ahead of the Fed’s December policy meeting, market volatility may increase.

 

“Investors hate noise and crave certainty, but the market simply cannot provide that certainty right now,” Siebert Financial Chief Investment Officer Mark Malek wrote in a report.

 

This week’s key macro events include Tuesday’s release of U.S. October retail sales and October producer price index (PPI) — both of which could influence expectations for the Fed’s December meeting.

Corporate News

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on the social platform X over the weekend that he will personally be “deeply involved” in the design of Tesla’s artificial intelligence (AI) chips, declaring his goal is “to put a new chip into mass production every year.”

 

U.S. media: Meta buried internal research unfavorable to the company  

 

Multiple U.S. media outlets reported on November 23 that social media giant Meta had conducted internal research showing that temporarily stopping use of its Facebook platform helped improve users’ mental well-being, but the company subsequently halted the research and did not disclose the results.  

 

The study, codenamed “Project Mercury,” was carried out in 2020 in collaboration with market research firm Nielsen to assess the impact on mental health of pausing Facebook use for one week.  

 

According to internal Meta documents, participants who stopped using Facebook experienced reductions in depression, anxiety, loneliness, and other measures. However, after discovering evidence that its social media products negatively affected users’ mental health, Meta concluded the findings might be influenced by “existing media narratives,” terminated follow-up research, and decided not to make the results public.

 

Saudi Aramco considering asset sales to raise tens of billions  

 

Reports say Saudi Aramco is exploring what would be its largest asset sale to date in order to raise tens of billions of dollars. The company is reportedly considering share sales or oil-terminal leasing deals and is also looking at offloading parts of its real estate portfolio.