Stock futures move lower ahead of ISM manufacturing data

Yahoo Finance Live’s Brad Smith breaks down how stock futures are moving ahead of an upcoming manufacturing data release.

Video transcript

- Well, let's get a look at the YFi Interactive for a deeper dive into February's action and what to expect in March here as well. You're taking a look at the futures this morning. Actually, let's just scroll this a little bit here so we can get you that futures look. But that's where the Dow closed yesterday. It closed out on a down note for the month of February. But taking a look at the Dow futures now, down by about 2/10 of a percent here. And putting this on a chart for you so you could see what that past month has been like.

And, ultimately, one thing that we are going to continue to track over that past month and that past month's activity, the Dow, that moved lower. This is the futures. So I'm going to put this back on that broader view for you folks there. But the Dow over the past month down 4%. The NASDAQ composite, that move lower by about 1.1%, even amid this rebound that we've seen in tech to begin the year.

And the S&P 500. You saw that move lower by about 2.6%. So there's a few things on the spending fronts, both for consumers and households, but also for businesses to look out for this month, particularly you're going to get some earnings from both cloud companies and companies in the business of cushioning your feet. The sneaker companies are going to be reporting too. So it will be interesting to see what type of spending they're tracking among both of those subsets of consumers.

- Yeah. And as I mentioned, we're going to get manufacturing data today from ISM and S&P Global, which will add to the already sort of confusing, honestly, data landscape that we've gotten out thus far. Strong jobs. Strong consumer. Some of the other measures not as strong. Inflation still rising. Can we take a look at the 10 year, actually, as we're taking a look at how the month has been because the 10 year movement has been interesting. This is yields. That means price has gone down.

So just as we have seen stocks fall, people are not finding any refuge in bonds. Yes, people are buying to some degree for the yield as the yield is going higher. But the price has been going lower. So there's really not been that many places to hide during this month. But if you look at the heat map, I know that we have one place that there has been to hide. And that's in some of these large-cap tech stocks. You want to hit the month to data or the one month perhaps?

- One month. Yeah.

- Let's do the one month because there you'll see a lot more green on the screen. Tesla up 19%. Nvidia up 19%. So that's been one of the areas, perhaps, that some investors have been going into, even as rate expectations rise.

- Yeah. And even over the S&P 500 sector performance that we've seen, it's interesting. Energy, of course, the major story of 2022, the outperformer in that year. However, energy lagged last month. That was down by nearly 7%, while, yeah, take a look at technology, to your point, those mega-cap tech stocks really putting the team on their back last month and, really, the lone gainer over the course of February. We'll see if that activity persists throughout March as well.

- Yes, we will. We'll be keeping an eye on that. We talked about the data we got this morning. We also got Chinese manufacturing data that came in better than estimated. That has been helping out stocks as well. Some of the ADRs that trade here in the US. That's the one month, which obviously has looked pretty lousy. You want to take a look at the premarket for some of these guys to see how they're doing because this is going to be an area of intense, intense focus as well. Alibaba, for example, is up by nearly 6% this morning. And we're seeing a lot of other green premarket trades for a lot of these Chinese companies.

- Yeah. And it's also been interesting to track some of the companies that are benefiting from what's taking place in the data that's coming out of China as well. One particular company that talks a lot about their ambitions in construction in China and looking for that to grow out even more as some of that stimulus gets put into construction projects in China, Caterpillar, one of the Dow 30 components here. And so you heard them talk about that handily on their earnings call as well.