Here’s what we’re watching ahead of Monday’s opening bell.
- U.S. stock futures edged down after a large investment fund unwound billions of dollars in holdings, triggering concern that banks that dealt with the firm could face big losses.
- Futures tied to the S&P 500 slipped 0.4%, pointing to losses for the broad index after it climbed to a record high on Friday. Contracts for the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 futures retreated 0.2%. Read our full market wrap here.
What’s Coming Up
- On the conference circuit, BioMarin Pharmaceutical and Jazz Pharmaceuticals are among companies due to present at the JPMorgan Napa Valley Forum. The HSBC West Coast Financials Conference also gets under way.
Market Movers to Watch
- Shares of major investment banks dropped ahead of the bell in New York. Goldman Sachs Group fell 3.5%, Morgan Stanley lost 3.1% and Citigroup slipped 1.9%.
- Overseas, shares of Credit Suisse and Nomura Holdings tumbled. The banks said they could incur substantial losses from dealings with a U.S. client. In recent days, losses at Archegos Capital Management, run by former Tiger Asia manager Bill Hwang, triggered the liquidation of positions approaching $30 billion in value.
- At the center of the story gripping Wall Street: Mysterious recent moves in shares of Discovery and ViacomCBS. Class A Discovery shares rose 2.1% in premarket trading after slumping 27% on Friday. ViacomCBS shares slipped 1.6% after also sliding 27% Friday.
- CM Life Sciences II jumped 7.4% after The Wall Street Journal reported that the special-purpose acquisition company is nearing a deal to merge with protein-analysis company SomaLogic. The SPAC could finalize a merger that values SomaLogic at around $1.25 billion as soon as Monday.
- Publishing pop: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt rose 2.8% after the Journal reported that News Corp is nearing an agreement to purchase the consumer arm of the educational publisher. News Corp owns Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones.
Market Fact
- There are another roughly 400 SPACs searching for merger targets to take public, including hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Tontine Holdings, the largest SPAC ever. Here’s a visual guide to SPACs, the hottest trend in markets this year.
Chart of the Day
Spring hasn’t been kind to stock-market highfliers. Sectors that benefited most from the shift to working from home have fallen hard since late January, as rising interest rates pushed investors into investments promising surer returns.
