Futures slip after bond yields surge, Bitcoin tumbles - what's moving markets

investing.com:

Investing.com -- Bond yields pull back slightly following a surge on Thursday that weighed on the main indices on Wall Street, while Bitcoin tumbles after a news report claimed that billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX wrote down the value of the cryptocurrency that it owns. Elsewhere, indebted developer Evergrande files for bankruptcy protection in the U.S., as problems continue to mount in China's massive property sector.

1. Futures dip after bond market sell-off rocks stocks

An advisor to former U.S. President Bill Clinton is said to have once quipped that, if reincarnation existed, he would like to come back as the bond market. «You can intimidate everybody» was his reasoning.

It's an oft-repeated adage, but still worth recalling after a day like Thursday, when the 10-year Treasury yield surged to its highest close since 2007 and the 30-year T-note yield jumped to a 12-year high. Prices typically move inversely to yields.

The narrative driving the tumble in U.S. government debt revolves around stronger-than-anticipated economic data and the Federal Reserve's warning in the minutes from its most recent meeting of persistent «upside» pressures to inflation. Bake these two together and markets are now guessing that interest rates will likely stay elevated for longer.

While it may be too much to say that investors were intimidated, it sure seems like they at least took note of the surge in yields. The main indices on Wall Street dropped for a third straight day, extending an August malaise in equity markets.

U.S. stock futures dipped slightly on Friday as traders tried to gauge the implications of the bond market's ructions. At 06:00 ET (10:00 GMT), the Dow futures contract was down 47 points or 0.14%, S&P 500 futures