The Money Edit

Opening bell

Opening bell

S&P futures 7,702 0.25%
Brent crude $98.62 1.7%
Nikkei 225 65,269 1.7%
Dow futures 0.73% to 53,051
10-year Treasury yield to 4.80%

Oil nears $100 as Mideast strikes rattle markets

Overnight

US markets were closed Monday for Labor Day, so the last full session was Friday, when the S&P 500 fell 0.38% to 7,718.36 and the Dow dropped 0.51% to 53,413.60 after the August jobs report showed 162,000 jobs added against expectations of 55,000, which pushed Treasury yields up. Over the weekend the US struck three Iranian oil tankers and Saudi Arabia halted operations at energy facilities in its south following attacks claimed by the Houthis, sending Brent crude, the main global oil benchmark, up $1.62 to $98.62 a barrel. Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 1.7% to 65,269 and Germany's DAX slipped to 25,943, while US futures pointed lower this morning with the Dow off 0.73% and the S&P 500 off 0.25%.

What to watch

The Treasury sells 3-year notes at 1:00pm Eastern, and the demand at these auctions is a live gauge of how much investors want to lend to the US government and at what price, which feeds straight into mortgage and loan rates. GameStop reports earnings today and Oracle later this week, though the week's real event is Friday's Consumer Price Index, the main measure of US inflation, because a hot jobs report plus oil near $100 has moved the market toward pricing roughly even odds of a Fed rate hike this month rather than a cut. The August NFIB small business optimism survey landed at 6:00am Eastern, and China released its own inflation figures overnight.

Sources