By Pranav Kashyap and Twesha Dikshit
Feb 2 (Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures fell on Monday, as a violent selloff in precious metals unsettled investors at the start of a week packed with corporate earnings and major economic data.
Gold dropped as much as 6% and silver tumbled 10%, as commodity exchange CME Group boosted margin requirements for the precious metals following a historic plunge on Friday. The rout rippled across markets as leveraged investors were forced to unwind positions to meet margin calls.
U.S.-listings of gold and silver miners dropped in premarket trading. Newmont fell 0.5%, while Harmony Gold and Sibanye Stillwater slid 1.2% and 0.7%, respectively.
Hecla Mining and Endeavour Silver slipped 0.4% and 1.2%, respectively.
The metals selloff deepened last week after U.S. President Donald Trump nominated Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve chair to replace Jerome Powell in May, a move that investors largely viewed as hawkish.
“Markets are trading cautiously as investors navigate a dense macro calendar and recalibrate expectations around the pace of global monetary easing,” said Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com.
“This positioning-led adjustment has unfolded against a backdrop of thin liquidity and heightened sensitivity to macro headlines, amplifying intraday volatility.”
Shares of energy companies dropped as oil prices fell 5%, after Trump said Iran was “seriously talking” with Washington, signalling de-escalation and easing supply disruption concerns. Exxon Mobil and Chevron fell between 1.1% and 1.8%. [O/R]
At 07:00 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were down 55 points, or 0.11%, S&P 500 E-minis were down 34.5 points, or 0.5%, and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were down 217.5 points, or 0.85%.
The volatility VIX index climbed to 18.59, hovering near a two‑week high after last week’s choppy stretch, triggered by mixed mega‑cap earnings and heightened policy uncertainty stemming from Trump’s pick of Warsh.
Despite bouts of selloff in January due to geopolitical tensions, all three indexes ended the month higher, with the S&P crossing 7,000 points for the first time.
Tech mega-caps slipped in premarket trading, with Nvidia and Tesla down 1.3% and 2.1%, respectively, while Meta and Alphabet lost around 1%.
Microsoft and Amazon lost about 0.7% each.
Investors face another heavy week of tech earnings, with 128 of S&P 500 companies expected to report results, including Alphabet, Amazon and AMD.
Market reaction to last week’s tech results underscored the narrowing tolerance for costly capital‑spending plans unless companies can show accelerating growth.
Microsoft shares notched their worst week since March 2020 on Friday, after cloud revenue disappointed, heightening scrutiny over whether the industry’s multi-billion dollar AI investments will show meaningful returns.
Disney shares gained 2.4% after posting first-quarter earnings above Wall Street expectations.
The U.S. entered what is expected to be a brief shutdown on Saturday after Congress failed to approve a deal to keep a wide swath of operations funded.
Economic data this week will provide several checkpoints on the health of the U.S. economy.
January manufacturing PMI data is due later on Monday, followed by S&P Global’s composite PMI on Wednesday. Labor‑market indicators take center stage later in the week with JOLTS, jobless claims and Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report.
Among other stock moves, Humana shares fell 2.1% after Morgan Stanley downgraded the stock to ‘underweight’ from ‘equal weight.’ Best Buy dropped 1.6% after a JPMorgan rating downgrade.
(Reporting by Pranav Kashyap and Twesha Dikshit in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
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