S&P 500 futures steady after 520-point Dow surge, as Powell comments awaited

What’s driving markets

The S&P 500 surged 8.9% in November — the best monthly gain since July 2022 — as the 70 basis point peak-to-trough decline in the 10-year Treasury
BX:TMUBMUSD10Y
was the steepest since the 2008 global financial crisis, according to Goldman Sachs.

“Bond yields in the U.S. and Europe have tumbled during November as inflation falls and policy rates peak. This has proved a welcome respite for global equity markets, which were under pressure from rising bond yields over the summer,” said Alastair George, chief investment strategist at Edison Investment Research.

The firm is neutral on global equities with U.S. valuations close to the top of their recent price-to-book range.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will be at Spelman College in Atlanta, where at 11 a.m. Eastern he will have the chance to make opening remarks and then participate in a fireside chat with the school’s president. Earlier this month, Powell reminded the markets that the Fed still has a bias toward further rate hikes.

Before the Powell speech, the key Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing report is due, as automakers release their monthly sales statistics throughout the day.

Tesla shares
TSLA,
-1.66%
were trading lower in premarket action, having lost ground after the company’s Cybertruck presentation.

There also were a number of after-hours earnings from the tech space, including from Dell Technologies
DELL,
+1.08%,
Marvell Technology
MRVL,
-0.66%,
Elastic
ESTC,
+0.90%,
Samsara
IOT,
-2.13%,
and UiPath
PATH,
-0.55%.