Stock futures inched higher early Wednesday, after investors began the second half with a reduced appetite for technology stocks.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 69 points, or 0.2%. S&P 500 futures were up 0.1% along with Nasdaq 100 futures.
The blue-chip Dow advanced 400 points on Monday, while the S&P 500slipped 0.1%. The Nasdaq Compositelost 0.8% as traders shunned the high-flying tech stocks that drove the market’s second quarter rebound.
The information technology sector of the S&P 500 – whose constituents include Nvidia, Palantir and Advanced Micro Devices – lost more than 1% on Tuesday, as did the communications services sector. Instead, investors gravitated toward health care and materials names. Gains in Amgen, Johnson & Johnson and UnitedHealthlifted the 30-stock Dow.
Elsewhere, President Donald Trump’s tax-and-spending bill narrowly passed the Senate on Tuesday. The measure will return to the House, where there are still hold-outs among GOP lawmakers.
“We expect to see more volatility in fixed income, even once they get the bill passed, whatever that looks like,” said Jose Rasco, HSBC Global Private Banking and Wealth Management Americas CIO on “Closing Bell: Overtime.” “That’s going to bleed over into the equity markets.”
Still, this turbulence is likely to be short-lived, he said. “Once these things get resolved and once the [Federal Reserve] gets back in gear, there’s a lot of upside here,” Rasco said.
Traders are also looking for any progress on trade deals as Trump’s 90-day pause on his sharpest tariffs is set to expire next week.
On the economic front Wednesday, investors await ADP’s private payrolls report due before the bell. Economists polled by Dow Jones anticipate that private employers added 120,000 jobs in June, up sharply from the gain of 37,000 in May.
The main event in this holiday-shortened week will be June’s big jobs report, due Thursday morning.
