Stock Futures Slip as Investors Monitor News on Tariffs; Tesla Shares Plunge After Musk Announces New Political Party

Stock futures moved slightly lower on Monday as investors digested the latest developments on the global trade front.

Futures tied to the S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq were recently down 0.2% and 0.3%, respectively, while Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose fractionally. Stocks are coming off a winning week, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite at record levels while the Dow enters the week less than 0.5% away from its first new high since December.

White House officials over the weekend said that tariffs would be reimposed on leading trading partners on August 1 if agreements aren’t reached before then. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said this morning in an interview with CNBC that several deals are expected in the next few days. The so-called reciprocal tariffs, which roiled financial markets in early April when they were first announced, had been expected to go back into effect on July 9 at the end of a 90-day pause.

Meanwhile President Donald Trump said late Sunday in a Truth Social post that countries “aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS” would face an additional 10% tariff. The BRICS group includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Iran.

Tesla (TSLA) was the big decliner in premarket trading Monday, with shares falling 6% after CEO Elon Musk, who has been a vocal critic of the massive tax and spending bill that Congress approved last week, announced over the weekend he is creating a new political party. Musk, who until recently ran the government’s Department of Government Efficiency, has engaged in a public feud with Trump over the last several weeks, raising concerns among investors about the potential impact on Tesla.

Other mega-cap technology stocks were mostly lower this morning. Nvidia (NVDA), Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOG), Meta Platforms (META) and Broadcom (AVGO) each fell less than 1%, while shares of Microsoft (MSFT) and Amazon (AMZN) inched higher.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which affects borrowing costs on all sorts of loans, was at 4.36% this morning, up from 4.34% at the end of last week and at its highest levels in two weeks. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the performance of the dollar against a basket of foreign currencies, rose 0.2% to 97.37, after hitting its lowest level since early 2022 last week.

Bitcoin was at $108,500, down from an overnight high of $109,700. The digital currency isn’t far from its all-time high of around $112,000.

Gold futures were down 0.9% at $3,315 an ounce this morning, while West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. crude oil benchmark, slipped 0.2% to $66.85 per barrel.