US Futures Point to a Bounce After Friday’s Slump: Markets Wrap

(Bloomberg) — US stocks looked set to claw back ground after Friday’s sharp selloff, with Nvidia Corp. rising in early trading. German stocks gained after conservatives led by Friedrich Merz emerged as the winners in a weekend vote.

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S&P 500 contracts climbed 0.5%, while those on the Nasdaq 100 rose 0.4%. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. shares were up in the premarket on solid results boosted by a strong jump in insurance underwriting. Nvidia shares rose as much as 1.5% in early trading, days before its earnings release. Apple Inc. shares slid after saying that it plans to spend $500 billion domestically over the next four years to hire workers and build out AI capacity.

The chip giant’s next scorecard Wednesday will be a key test of demand for US megacap stocks and the artificial intelligence frenzy that’s powered them. With recent advances in AI by China’s DeepSeek, Nvidia is under pressure to deliver blockbuster results to reassert its leadership.

“Markets are in wait-and-see mode until we see those bellwether AI earnings as that could be a key turning point,” Laura Cooper, head of global investment strategy at Nuveen, said in an interview.

After years of outperformance, the benchmark S&P 500 Index is trailing international peers in 2025 as investors are put off by uncertainty from US President Donald Trump’s policies on tariffs and their potential to rekindle inflation. Wall Street’s top strategists say the underperformance is unlikely to last long given the robust outlook for US economic growth.

“We’ve seen a lot of inflation fears, but now markets are shifting focus back to the potential growth effects of these US policies,” Nuveen’s Cooper said.

The Stoxx Europe 600 Index fluctuated. Electrification stocks, including Siemens Energy AG, ABB Ltd and Schneider Electric SE, fell as concerns grew around data centers spending after a report that Microsoft Corp. has begun canceling leases for a substantial amount of datacenter capacity.

The euro added 0.2%, curtailing an earlier 0.7% jump as initial enthusiasm about Germany’s election gave way to concern the new government may lack a consensus to push through much-needed economic reforms.

Merz emerged as the winner in Sunday’s election, but the results gave his Christian Democrat-led bloc just one clear path to power and they face intense pressure to move quickly to form a government and rally support for measures including potentially looser borrowing rules.

“Centrist parties failed to retain a constitutional majority, complicating the prospects of decisive fiscal regime change,” said Apolline Menut, an economist at Carmignac. “Tricky political compromises would be required, as well as fiscal creativity.”

Key events this week:

Eurozone CPI, Monday
Israel rate decision, Monday
South Korea rate decision, Tuesday
US consumer confidence, Tuesday
Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin speaks, Tuesday
Thailand rate decision, Wednesday
Nvidia earnings, Wednesday
G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors meet in Cape Town though Feb. 27
Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic speaks, Wednesday
Germany CPI, unemployment, Friday
India GDP, Friday
Japan Tokyo CPI, industrial production, retail sales, Friday
US PCE inflation, income and spending, Friday
Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee speaks, Friday