Friday opens with a modest rebound in U.S. equity futures

Friday opens with a modest rebound in U.S. equity futures, but the more consequential weekly message is still coming from the bond and commodity markets. S&P 500 futures are up roughly 0.4%, with Dow and Nasdaq futures about 0.6% higher, after Thursday’s selloff. Yet the…

Friday opens with a modest rebound in U.S. equity futures, but the more consequential weekly message is still coming from the bond and commodity markets. S&P 500 futures are up roughly 0.4%, with Dow and Nasdaq futures about 0.6% higher, after Thursday’s selloff. Yet the 10-year Treasury remains just under 4.70% and the 30-year around 5.25%, while Brent crude is near $94. Global equities are heading toward their weakest week since mid-July. The market has stabilized overnight; the underlying price of capital has not.

That distinction frames the morning. Treasury’s expanded long-duration buyback program has improved the technical backdrop, but investors are not treating it as a substitute for fiscal consolidation. At the same time, the physical oil squeeze is becoming harder to dismiss as a geopolitical risk premium alone: Iranian barrels available to Chinese buyers have fallen sharply, forcing refiners toward alternative supply. Meanwhile, Ross Stores has delivered another piece of evidence that the U.S. consumer is not disappearing so much as reorganizing around value.