Futures muted after bumper 2023, Bitcoin tops $45K - what's moving markets
Investing.com -- U.S. stock futures point to a muted start to 2024 following a blockbuster year on Wall Street. Elsewhere, China's BYD (SZ:002594) unveils fourth-quarter production figures that heap pressure on Tesla's (NASDAQ:TSLA) spot as the world's biggest electric vehicle maker. Bitcoin tops $45,000, bolstered by expectations that U.S. securities regulators may be edging closer to approving an exchange traded fund tracking the megapopular cryptocurrency.
1. Futures hover around flatline ahead of first trading session of 2024
U.S. stock futures hugged the flatline ahead of the start of a new trading year, as investors attempted to gauge the staying power of a bumper 2023 for equities on Wall Street.
By 05:04 ET (10:04 GMT), the Dow futures contract was mostly unchanged, S&P 500 futures had dipped by 4 points or 0.1%, and Nasdaq 100 futures were down by 29 points or 0.2%. Markets were closed for the New Year's Day holiday on Monday.
The main indices surged last year despite initial worries that an unprecedented string of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes could spark a recession. But resilience in the U.S. economy helped fuel optimism that the Fed could engineer a so-called «soft landing,» in which inflation is cooled without causing an economic meltdown.
Investors will have the chance to parse through a bevy of fresh data this week that could shed light on the state of the world's largest economy — and, particularly, its all-important labor market — in the final days of 2023.
2. U.S. indices post blockbuster 2023
The major averages all slipped marginally on Friday, although the declines took little away from what was a stellar 2023 on Wall Street.
The benchmark S&P 500 surged by 24.2% annually, closing out the
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