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Briefing.com Summary:
*Tariff uncertainty is the ostensible reason for the weak disposition of the equity futures market.
*Most of the Magnificent 7 cohort is trading lower ahead of the open.
*Eli Lilly got some good news (from a competitor).
The stock market is poised to start today's session on a lower note, hurt reportedly by the heightened uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration's tariff approach after the Supreme Court on Friday struck down the president's ability to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
Currently, the S&P 500 futures are down 21 points and are trading 0.3% below fair value, the Nasdaq 100 futures are down 125 points and are trading 0.7% below fair value, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures are down 200 points and are trading 0.4% below fair value.
Following the Friday ruling, President Trump was quick to announce a 10% global tariff under the Section 122 authority, which has a 150-day shelf life without additional Congressional approval, in a bid to help reclaim some of the lost IEEPA revenue. Over the weekend, he raised the Section 122 tariff rate to 15%.
Bloomberg reports that the EU is proposing a freeze on ratifying its trade deal with the U.S. until it gets more details from the Trump administration on its trade policy. USTR Jamieson Greer told CBS News that the U.S. will honor trade deals despite the SCOTUS ruling; and Treasury Secretary Bessent stressed that there would be virtually no lost tariff revenue in 2026 after using the Section 122 authority and combining it with Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs.
The gist of things is that the tariff policy is in a state of flux along with the matter of potential refunds for tariffs already paid by importers prior to the Supreme Court's IEEPA ruling.
The market, though, took all of these developments in stride on Friday, as the indices closed higher and Treasury yields were little changed. The fact of the matter is that the SCOTUS ruling wasn't a surprise. Accordingly, tying this morning's weakness to the tariff uncertainty may be more of an excuse than anything else for a market that continues to contend with mega-cap softness.
Alphabet (GOOGL) is trading higher in pre-market action, getting a lift from a Wells Fargo upgrade to Overweight from Equal Weight, and NVIDIA (NVDA) sports a modest gain on a Wall Street Journal report that it will introduce chips for laptops this year. The remainder of the Magnificent 7 cohort is shading lower ahead of the open.
Eli Lilly (LLY) isn't in that bunch, yet it is a mega-cap stock bucking the weakness after Novo Nordisk's (NVO) CagriSema missed its endpoint of shoing non-inferiority to Eli Lilly's tirzepatide at 84 weeks.
In other developments, the U.S. and Iran will resume their nuclear negotiations on Thursday amid a swirl of reports that the U.S. is still considering a possible military strike; gold and silver futures prices are headed higher; much of the northeast (and the airlines) are digging out from a big winter storm; and Merck (MRK) will be organizing its Human Health business into an Oncology Business unit and a Specialty, Pharma & Infectious Diseases Business Unit.
