What moved
- US futures: S&P 500 futures are trading 1.44% higher at 7,767 and Nasdaq 100 futures 2.16% higher at 30,254, both well ahead of Friday's cash close, when the S&P 500 finished up 0.17% at 7,650, the Nasdaq Composite up 0.39% and the Dow down 0.18% at 51,683.
- Europe: mid-session gains of more than 1% everywhere — FTSE 100 +1.01% at 10,767, DAX +1.15%, CAC 40 +1.0%, Euro Stoxx 50 +1.36% and the STOXX 600 +1.18% — extending an early tech-led advance through the morning.
- Asia: Hong Kong closed up 1.18%, Shanghai 0.97%, the Kospi 1.65% and Taiwan 1.14%. Tokyo was shut for a holiday; the Nikkei's last close was Friday's 65,019.
Why
The most important number this morning is oil. Brent is trading 3.0% lower at $100.75 and WTI at $93.03, a fourth straight session of declines, after President Trump told Fox News he would probably be open to meeting Iran's President Pezeshkian at the UN General Assembly, which opens in New York on Tuesday, and reportedly decided against striking the Houthis for now. Saudi Arabia is also working to restore roughly half the capacity of its East-West pipeline within days after last week's attacks, and analysts are concluding the supply disruption is less severe than first feared. With the Fed having raised rates to 3.75%-4.00% last Wednesday explicitly because oil-driven inflation was broadening, a falling crude price is the single cleanest relief valve for both equities and bonds: the 10-year yield is 3.7 basis points lower at 4.96% after touching 5% on Friday, and the 30-year is 3.6 basis points lower at 5.30%.
The second leg is technology. Chip-linked names led Europe's tech sector roughly 2% higher in the morning and the same trade is driving Nasdaq futures' outperformance, with Thursday's Trump-Xi summit at the White House — tariffs, Taiwan and AI on the agenda, and Nvidia's Jensen Huang among the executives dining with Xi — framing the week as a potential de-escalation on two fronts at once. The US has described its preparatory talks with Beijing as very successful.
The crypto complex is the third mover: Bitcoin is 5.12% higher at $85,300, its highest since January, still riding the SEC's five-year exemption for tokenised US stock trading announced last Thursday. Friday's Wall Street gainers were dominated by that trade, with Strategy up 16.39%, Coinbase 11.66% and Robinhood 9.12%.
Sentiment & risk appetite
Risk appetite is clearly on, but from a narrow base. The VIX at 14.87 is barely changed and 58% below its 52-week high, yet the MOVE index of rates volatility jumped 5.79% to 80.6 on Friday — the bond market, not equities, is where the Fed anxiety lives. Friday's US cash tape was thin: across PrimerIQ's universe only 2,239 stocks advanced against 3,582 decliners, an advance-decline ratio of 0.63, with tech the sole meaningful sector gainer (+0.82%) while utilities, materials (both -1.42%) and communication services (-1.37%) fell. Havens are soft: gold is 0.54% lower at $4,401, the dollar index flat at 100.25, and copper is up 3.35% to within 0.07% of its 52-week high — a growth signal that sits awkwardly with the soft activity data.
Economic calendar
The 08:30 ET print was the Chicago Fed National Activity Index for August, which fell to -0.04 from an upwardly revised +0.08 in July — a modest signal that growth slowed into late summer, and one the market has ignored. Nothing else of consequence is scheduled for the US session today. The week's set-pieces are political rather than statistical: the UN General Assembly opens Tuesday, with any Trump-Pezeshkian contact the swing factor for oil, and the Trump-Xi summit is Thursday. The Fed's hike to 3.75%-4.00% was unanimous, and the dot plot has a median of one more increase this year, so any Fed speakers this week will be parsed for whether the oil retreat changes that.
Earnings
Nothing material has reported ahead of the US open. The only scheduled name of note today, Abivax, releases after the Paris close. Friday's headline company story was Xenon Pharmaceuticals, which fell 30.69% after pausing enrolment in its depression trials of azetukalner on neuropsychiatric side-effect reports, even as it filed the drug for approval in epilepsy.