Cyber Monday in focus, Musk's Israel visit - what's moving markets

investing.com:

Investing.com -- Retailers are expected to unveil deep Cyber Monday sales in a bid to persuade inflation-squeezed American consumers to open up their wallets ahead of the holidays. Meanwhile, markets will be monitoring shoppers' behavior as they try to parse out the Federal Reserve's future interest rate path. Elsewhere, Elon Musk is due to meet with Israel's president, while U.S. President Joe Biden will reportedly skip the upcoming COP28 climate conference.

1. Futures inch lower

U.S. stock futures pointed lower prior to start off a fresh trading week, as investors attempted to gauge how customer spending habits during a series of annual post-Thanksgiving promotional drives may impact Federal Reserve interest rate policy decisions.

By 04:55 ET (09:55 GMT), the Dow futures contract had slipped 91 points or 0.3%, S&P 500 futures had dropped by 12 points or 0.3%, and Nasdaq 100 futures had fallen by 38 points or 0.2%. Last week, the main indices on Wall Street jumped to a fourth-consecutive winning week.

Prior to both Black Friday and today's Cyber Monday sales events (see below), many retail companies had flagged that American shoppers could be less willing to spend big on holiday gifts this year due to high inflation and elevated interest rates.

Traders are curious to see if any signs that consumers are reining in expenditures may convince Fed officials to end their long-standing campaign of monetary policy tightening aimed at cooling inflationary pressures. The U.S. central bank is already widely anticipated to leave rates steady at a meeting in December, while bets have grown that it could even begin to slash borrowing costs sometime next year.

These expectations supported a surge in gold prices to their highest level