Five things you need to know before the market opens on Monday July 3:
1. -- Stock Futures Mixed; Markets Set For Early Close
U.S. equity futures were mixed heading into a holiday-shortened trading session Monday, while the dollar extended gains against its global peers as investors looked to a series of employment data releases later in the week to define the Federal Reserve's rate path.
Stocks ended firmly higher Friday following data showing that the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, the PCE Price Index, eased to the lowest levels in two years, with core measure falling below Street forecasts in the latest sigh of easing price pressures.
Bond yields, however, continue to reflect the Fed's assessment that the economy needs at least two more rate hikes between now and the end of the year, with 2-year Treasury notes yields rising to 4.932% in overnight trading and 10-year notes testing the 4% level at 4.839%
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six global currencies, was marked 0.22% higher at 103.158.
The higher rate complex hasn't knocked stocks from their multi-year perch, however, and even with 2-year notes testing the 5% level, the tech-focused Nasdaq has enjoyed its best first half gain -- 30.5% -- since 1983, although more than 85% of that advance can be put down to the so-called 'Magnificent Seven' mega-caps.
The benchmark S&P 500, meanwhile, is up nearly 16% of the first half of the year, its best performance in four years, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 3.8%.
Heading into the start of the first day of the third quarter, with trading set to close at 1:00 pm Eastern time, futures contracts tied to the S&P 500 were indicating a 4 point opening bell gain.
Contacts tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average are priced for a 17 point move to the downside while the Nasdaq is looking at a 27 point opening bell gain.
Overnight in Asia, another set of weak PMI manufacturing activity data from China provided another boost to bets that Beijing will introduce a fresh round of stimulus into the world's second-largest economy, lifting the MSCI ex-Japan benchmark by around 1.34% into the close of trading.
Stronger consumer sentiment helped Japan's Nikkei 225 rise 1.7% to a fresh 33-year high of 33,753.33 point following on from its sixth consecutive upside month in June.
In Europe, the region-wide Stoxx 600 was marked 0.2% higher on the session, largely tracking U.S. futures, while London's FTSE 100 gained 0.24%.
2. -- Week Ahead: Jobs Data, Fed Minutes In Focus
Employment data will headline a holiday shortened calendar of releases this week, highlighted by the release of the Labor Department's non-farm payroll report on Friday.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who told investors on two separate occasions last week that the central bank favors "two or more" rate hikes between now and the end of the year, has linked what he has called "unacceptably" high inflation it links to a robust jobs market.
That puts this week's data decidedly in the frame of investors looking to either accept or challenge the Fed's rate path. With markets closed on Tuesday for the July 4 holiday, the ADP jobs report will fall on Thursday, followed by weekly jobless claims and the May Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, report.
The Labor Department will publish its June payroll report on Friday, with analyst looking for a headline gain of between 200,000 and 225,000, with the unemployment rate holding at 3.7%.
Minutes from the Fed's June meeting will also be published on Wednesday at 2:00 pm Easter time and will make for interesting analysis from investors following the central bank's decision to pause its year-long series of rate hikes while simultaneously agreeing to execute at least two more over the coming months.
No major corporate earnings releases are slated for this week, with JPMorgan JPM kicking-off the second quarter reporting season late next week.
3. -- Tesla Shares Leap As Price Cuts Drive Record Q2 Deliveries
Tesla (TSLA) shares moved firmly higher in pre-market trading after the carmaker posted record second quarter deliveries powered in part by price cuts in the U.S, Europe and China.
Tesla delivered a record 466,140 new cars over the second quarter, the company said in a Sunday statement, up 83.5% from a year earlier and 10.2% north of the 422,875 tally reached over the three months ended in March.
Analysts' forecasts for deliveries ranged from 440,000 to around 450,000, with Refinitiv pegging the March quarter target at 448,000.
Tesla said it will publish its second quarter earnings on July 19, after the market closes. At present, analysts see June quarter earnings in the region of 79 cents per share, a 4% increase from last year, with revenues rising 42% to $24.1 billion.
Tesla shares were marked 6.22% higher in pre-market trading to indicate an opening bell price of $278.05 each.
4. -- JPMorgan Leads Banks Higher On Stress Test Dividend Increases
JPMorgan (JPM) shares lead bank stocks higher in pre-market trading as a host of major U.S. lenders unveiled plans to boost their quarterly dividend following Federal Reserve stress tests results published last week.
All 23 banks passed the Fed's annual assessment, which tests their ability to weather a significant economic downturn, and could suffer collective losses of around $541 billion while still maintaining healthy capital buffers.
The results opened the door for dividend and share buyback increases from larger domestic lenders, with Wells Fargo (WFC) boosting its payout by 16.7% to 30 cents per share.
Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) lifted their dividends by 10% to $2.75 and 85 cents per share respectively, while JPMorgan increased its payout by 5% to $1.05 per share.
JPMorgan shares were marked 0.14% higher in pre-market trading to indicate an opening bell price of $145.64 each, while Morgan Stanley gained 0.4%.
5. -- Elon Musk Limits Twitter Viewing Amid 'System Manipulation'
Twitter CEO Elon Musk unveiled plans over the weekend to limit the number of posts each user can view each day in order to address what he called "extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation" on the micro-blogging website.
The limits, Musk said, would only be temporary and restrict non-verified users to viewing 600 posts per day. Verified accounts, which pay $8 a month, can view 6,000 posts per day.
The totals were later lifted to 1,000 and 10,000 respectively following a series of user complaints and outages on various Twitter-linked platforms.
Earlier this spring, Musk wrote a letter to Microsoft MSFT claiming the tech giant had violated an agreement by using more data than it was permitted, and sharing some of that data with government officials.' Prior to that, Musk severed OpenAI's access to Twitter data, according to a New York Times report that suggested he was unhappy with the $2 million annual license agreement.
Musk, who purchased the company late last year for $44 billion, has reportedly been planning to use Twitter data to train a large language model used by the AI startup X.AI, which could provide a near-term challenge to Microsoft's ChatGPT.
