By Peter Nurse
Investing.com -- U.S. stocks are seen opening largely flat Monday, with investors talking a cautious stance ahead of the release of key minutes from the last Federal Reserve meeting while monitoring developments in Ukraine.
At 7 AM ET (1100 GMT), the Dow Futures contract was down 25 points, or 0.1%, while S&P 500 Futures traded 3 points, or 0.1%, higher and Nasdaq 100 Futures climbed 50 points, or 0.4%.
The main Wall Street indices posted healthy gains on Friday, with the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average closing 140 points of 0.4% higher, while both the broad-based S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 0.3%.
The economic highlight of the new week will be Wednesday’s minutes of the Federal Reserve’s March meeting, which will likely give investors an update on how officials view the monetary policy outlook following the central bank’s decision to lift interest rates last month by a quarter of a percentage point.
With inflation running at a four-decade high, and Friday’s official month jobs report showing continued strong growth in the labor market, the Fed is widely expected to hike by half a percentage point at its next meeting on May 4.
Expectations of hefty rate hikes by the Fed resulted in a closely watched part of the U.S. Treasury yield curve inverting on Friday, with the 2-year U.S. Treasury note yielding more than the 10-year note, a phenomenon that has predicted recessions in the past.
Investors will also continue to keep an eye on the latest developments in Ukraine, after reports over the weekend pointed to evidence of atrocities committed by Russian troops against civilians in the town of Bucha, something Moscow has denied.
Finance ministers from the Eurozone are meeting to discuss fresh sanctions on Russia. French President Emmanuel Macron indicated earlier Monday that the bloc should extend measures to cover Russian oil and coal, although he left out natural gas as that would run into political difficulties in Germany, which depends heavily on Russian gas.
In the corporate sector, JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) is likely to be in the spotlight after CEO Jamie Dimon warned Monday that the bank could lose about $1 billion on its Russia exposure.
Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) will also be in focus after a regulatory filing showed that Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) boss Elon Musk has taken a 9.2% stake in the social media company.
Oil prices stabilized after last week’s weakness after a number of major consuming nations, led by the U.S., announced plans to release crude from their strategic reserves in an attempt to cool soaring prices.
The U.S. announced, late last week, plans to release one million barrels a day for six months, starting in May, while members of the International Energy Agency also agreed to release more oil.
By 7 AM ET, U.S. crude futures traded 0.1% higher at $99.36 a barrel, while the Brent contract fell 0.1% to $104.31. The two benchmarks both recorded weekly losses of around 13% last week.
Additionally, gold futures rose 0.3% to $1,929.15/oz, while EUR/USD traded 0.4% lower at 1.1005.