A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets from Mike Dolan
Wall Street nursed a bruising on Walmart’s downbeat results, casting a cloud over the U.S. consumer just as more buoyant European markets awaited the weekend’s German election.
Another blizzard of often conflicting influences from geopolitics, trade, monetary policy and corporate earnings barrelled into world markets over the past 24 hours.
But it was the retailing giant’s miss on its sales and profit forecasts – citing the turbulent political environment and trade uncertainties ahead – that cut deepest.
Walmart’s stock recoiled 6.5%, denting a rise of over 80% to record highs over the past year and a strong outperformance since President Donald Trump’s election win.
Following last week’s disappointment on January U.S. retail sales, the miss dragged other retailers down in the slipstream and Amazon lost almost 2% too. The S&P500 ended off almost 0.5% and futures struggled to hold the line on Friday.
And adding some anxiety to the corporate fallout from radical U.S. government cuts, Palantir – which provides governments with services such as software that visualizes army positions – shed 5% after the Pentagon said it was looking at potential budget cuts for the fiscal year 2026.
Flash business surveys for February now top today’s macro diary, with AI chip behemoth Nvidia’s results due next week.
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve’s February surveys of its mid-Atlantic region also showed manufacturing activity readings tumbled this month by the most in nearly five years, and jobless claims ticked higher in the latest week.
Even as Fed officials continued to signal caution about easing policy any further amid persistent inflation uncertainties, Treasury yields fell back on the retail and business readouts.
Reining in debt yields further were comments from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said any move to increase the share of longer-term Treasuries in government debt issuance is “a long way off”. That’s despite his long-standing criticism of the previous Treasury boss Janet Yellen for front-loading debt in short-term maturities.
“We’re going to see what the market wants,” he said.
The retreat in yields and stocks dragged the dollar index back to its lowest level of the year – although the greenback found its feet again on Friday and clawed back some of those losses.
The dollar drop on Thursday was mostly concentrated against Japan’s yen, where speculation about another Bank of Japan interest rate rise as soon as next month has gone up a notch.
