S&P 500 Futures consolidate gains from record top amid firmer US Treasury yields

• S&P 500 Futures fails to extend previous day’s run-up, prints mild intraday losses.
• Covid strain from India, vaccine updates trouble traders but strong US Treasury yields stop bulls.
• Mixed data from China and Japan, Beijing’s restrictions on big techs add to the market confusion.
• Second-tier US data, risk news should be given priority.

S&P 500 Futures tease intraday low near 4,195 while stepping back from the all-time high flashed the previous day. In doing so, the risk barometer drops 0.20% amid the early Friday.

Mixed data from China and Japan seem to have recently weighed on the US equity derivative. While the dragon nation couldn’t flash another strong print of NBS Manufacturing PMI, Tokyo inflation figures jostled with upbeat industrial production and heavy unemployment rate from Japan to confluence markets.

Elsewhere, growing fears over the Indian-origin variant of the coronavirus (COVID-19) join AstraZeneca’s confusion for getting regulatory approval to weigh on the market sentiment. Additionally spoiling the mood could be China’s latest rules for technology companies and payment processors.

On the positive side, with faster vaccinations in the West, BioNTech’s hope of finding a cure to India’s ‘double-mutant virus’ and expectations concerning US President Joe Biden’s stimulus package seem to battle the bears.

Amid these plays, stocks in Asia-Pacific stay depressed while the US 10-year Treasury yields rise for the second consecutive day, up 1.1 basis points (bps) by the press time to 1.65%. However, the US dollar index (DXY) struggles to keep the previous day’s corrective pullback from a two-month low.

Given the mixed plays and sluggish markets, despite Wall Street’s upbeat performance, investors will pay close attention to risk catalysts ahead of the GDP figures from Eurozone and the US second-tier data.

Read: Wall Street Close: Mildly bid on upbeat earnings, US GDP, S&P 500 refreshes record top