US stock futures drifted lower on Monday as investors waited for the September ISM services reading, with elevated oil prices and a soft September jobs report still hanging over the tape.
Futures on the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq pointed down in premarket trading, Yahoo Finance reported. The data calendar is light but not empty: the ISM services index for September is expected at 55.2 against 55.4 in August, with the prices paid component seen at 73. The final S&P Global services PMI print is expected at 58.7. Both land before the New York open, and no notable earnings are on the schedule, which leaves the ISM print as the main event of the session.
Oil gives back part of its surge
Crude eased after a violent stretch. WTI futures opened at $91.58 a barrel on Monday and traded near $89.50, down about 1.7 percent, while Brent futures held near $103, Forbes Advisor and Investing.com data showed. Physical dated Brent had pushed above $120 last week on a diesel squeeze, China’s halt to fuel exports, Russia’s shipment ban and the Houthi strikes on Saudi Aramco sites in Riyadh and Khurais, and futures are only now settling back.
The Houthi attack came as Saudi Arabia began a ground offensive, adding a military dimension to a market already tight on diesel. Exports from Saudi Red Sea ports had only just recovered late September, and the strikes put that recovery in doubt again. Every escalation around Saudi infrastructure feeds straight into the physical premiums refiners are paying.
The heating bill is where the surge reaches households. Yahoo Finance reported over the weekend that home heating costs are soaring for millions of Americans this winter, a direct pass-through of the oil run. A G7 plan to release 100 million barrels of reserves is meant to blunt the pressure, and traders are waiting to see whether it does.
Gold pulled back alongside the risk-on tone, trading near $3,180 an ounce and down more than 1 percent, having set records through the oil crisis as investors sought shelter. Copper also slipped. The dollar held firm, which caps commodity upside for holders of other currencies.
The sell-off that keeps not happening
Strategists keep waiting for a pullback that refuses to arrive. “The market has had every reason to sell off, and it hasn’t sold off yet, and to me it feels like it’s running out of time,” Sean McLaughlin, chief options strategist at All Star Charts, told Yahoo Finance. Elevated oil, AI-related valuation risks and deteriorating market breadth have all argued for weakness in recent weeks, and none of it has stuck.
Bond caution is the newest input. Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi warned over the weekend that higher interest rates are already damaging the economy, Yahoo reported. The Federal Reserve’s next decision lands October 28, and traders cut expectations for further tightening after September payrolls came in soft. Richmond Fed chief Tom Barkin speaks this week, and every appearance will be parsed for hints on whether the October 28 decision is live or a hold.
Last week set the pattern
Equities rallied on the weak jobs print on October 2 as investors read softer hiring as a reason for the Fed to pause, then gave part of it back as oil climbed. The reversal left indexes near record territory but with fewer and fewer stocks doing the lifting, a breadth problem Yahoo flagged separately. Bitcoin and other risk assets traded the same pattern, rallying on October 2 and pulling back into the weekend.
Individual names told their own stories. Nvidia rose 1.34 percent to about $234 after the board authorized an extra $150 billion in buybacks, and Tesla gained 4.65 percent, while Micron fell more than 2 percent. The AI trade stays concentrated: a handful of mega-caps carry the indexes while the median stock stalls, which is the breadth problem in one sentence.
Overseas, India’s central bank opened a two-day meeting on Monday with investors loaded up on rate hike bets, a reminder that the inflation turn is global. South Africa’s central bank hiked 25 basis points last week, citing a persistent global supply shock, its governor saying the global economy is not in a healthy space. The oil run is doing that work: when crude jumps this fast, importers hike and exporters bank the windfall.
What to watch
ISM services and its prices paid reading arrive at 10:00 a.m. Eastern. A prices paid number above 73 would confirm that tariff and energy costs are still flowing through to service-sector input prices, which complicates the Fed’s picture no matter what the headline activity reading says.
Oil remains the swing variable: another escalation around Saudi exports or a faster reserve release would move both crude and equities. CPI later this month and the Fed meeting close out the macro calendar, and neither leaves much room for surprise by the time they arrive.
For now the market is choosing between two stubborn facts. Equities have not broken despite a list of reasons to break, and oil has not fully retraced despite Saudi Red Sea port exports recovering late last month. Monday’s data decides neither, but it sets the tone for a week without major earnings, where positioning flows and the ISM print carry more weight than they usually would.