Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., August 12, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Stock futures traded nearly unchanged Sunday evening after hopes for lower interest rates fueled a winning week on Wall Street.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose about 13 points. S&P 500 futures and the Nasdaq 100 futures were both flat.
Sunday night’s action comes after the three major averages notched their second straight positive week. The Dow climbed 1.7%, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite rose 0.9% and 0.8%, respectively. It was also the fourth week of gains out of the last five for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.
Small-cap stocks outperformed last week, jumping more than 3% as investors bet on forthcoming rate cuts from the Federal Reserve.
Ross Mayfield, investment strategist at Baird Private Wealth Management, also pointed to the S&P 500 Equal Weight Consumer Discretionary index hitting an all-time high as a sign that tariff-driven economic fears may be overblown.
“With the market’s message quite upbeat … it raises the question of whether the conventional wisdom about a weakening U.S. consumer and potential stagflation is missing the mark,” he wrote in a Friday note.
The Fed will continue to be in focus this week as central bank members travel to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the annual economic policy symposium. Investors will be monitoring the event for clues about the future path of rates. Fed funds futures are pricing in a nearly 85% likelihood that the central bank cuts rates at its next policy meeting in September, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.
Beyond economic policy, traders will be monitoring earnings reports due over the course of the week as the season winds down. Big-box retailers, including Home Depot, Lowe’s, Walmart and Target, are among the major companies slated to release results this week.
Of the more than 92% of S&P 500 companies that have already reported this quarter, almost 82% have surpassed Wall Street’s expectations, according to FactSet.
