US pre-open: Futures trade lower following fifth-straight winning week

(Sharecast News) - US futures were in the red ahead of the bell on Monday after the blue-chip Dow Jones turned in its fifth-straight winning week. As of 1300 GMT, Dow Jones futures were down 0.19%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 0.29% and 0.38% lower, respectively.

The Dow closed 294.61 points higher on Friday, bringing its year-to-date gain to just shy of 20%.

Stocks were lower in pre-market as rising treasury yields seemed to indicate concerns that rate cut expectations may have gone too far, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year note up roughly five basis points at 4.249% and its two-year counterpart about seven basis points higher at 4.621%.

Scope Markets' Joshua Mahony said: "Markets expect to see the FOMC drop their Fed Funds rate by at least 125-basis points next year, representing a somewhat optimistic five cuts in just eight meetings. Undoubtedly this does not exactly tally with the higher-for-longer theme touted by the central banks over the course of this year."

On the macro front, October factory orders data will be published at 1500 GMT.

Investors will be looking ahead to November's all-important jobs report on Friday, with traders looking for further hints that the Federal Reserve was done with its interest rate hiking programme, especially after comments from chairman Jerome Powell that it may well be "premature" to anticipate any easing in monetary policy.

In the corporate space, Alaska Airlines shares flew south before the open on the back of news that it had inked a deal to acquire rival Hawaiian Airlines as part of a $1.9bn deal as part of an effort for both carriers to expand along the West Coast.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com