Stock Futures Fall After Silver, Bitcoin Sell Off; Questions Loom Over AI Trade

Stock futures fell on Sunday night as Wall Street begins a new month of trading, with traders keeping an eye on bitcoin after a weekend sell-off.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures lost 143 points, or 0.3%. S&P 500 futures dipped 0.6%, while Nasdaq-100 futures shed nearly 1%.

Bitcoin dropped below $80,000 for the first time since April, a sign investors were taking more risk off the table following Friday's sharp declines in gold and silver. Silver, which has more than doubled over the past 12 months, plunged around 30% on Friday. That marked the metal's worst one-day performance since 1980. Gold also dropped around 9%.

Bitcoin last traded near $76,000.

Wall Street also turned its attention to Nvidia as questions over the artificial intelligence loomed.

The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that Nvidia's plans to pour $100 billion into OpenAI had stalled, with chipmaker execs expressing doubt about the deal.

Big earnings, jobs week

More than 100 S&P 500 companies are due to report this week, including Amazon, Alphabet and Disney. The overall reporting season has been strong thus far, but there have been some high-profile post-earnings sell-offs, including Microsoft.

Nonetheless, Deutsche Bank strategists noted this weekend that earnings growth is on track to be the strongest in four years.

Wall Street is also awaiting the release of the January U.S. jobs report, due Friday morning. Economists polled by Dow Jones expect 55,000 jobs were added last month.

Stocks are coming off a losing session, with the major benchmarks falling after President Donald Trump named Kevin Warsh as his nominee for Federal Reserve chairman. If confirmed, Warsh would replace Jerome Powell later this year.

Source: CNBC