The Market Brief
U.S. equity futures opened July cautiously as traders awaited comments from Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, with bets on a US rate hike building.
Impact Snapshot
🟥 ADP Non-Farm Employment - 8:15am
🟥 Fed Chairman Warsh Speaks - 9:00am
🟥 ISM Manufacturing PMI - 10:00am
Macro Viewpoint
U.S. stock index futures slipped Wednesday as the second half of 2026 opened cautiously, with fresh doubts over Middle East peace talks back in focus and investors awaiting comments from Fed Chair Kevin Warsh.
Markets have tried to look past the on-again, off-again negotiations and focus on economic fundamentals instead, but Wednesday’s move shows the war, and its grip on global energy markets, is still hard to ignore.
Separately, May job openings rose to a two-year high, a sign of labor market stability that gives the Fed more room to focus on inflation rather than employment.
Prime Intelligence
As July opens, seasonality leans in the S&P’s favor: July 3rd is the second-best seasonal day in our data, trailing only October 20th. The NDX view is that the Nasdaq 100 tends to open the month sideways to moderately higher before its tailwind builds mid-month, historically peaking around July 17th.
Over the past year and a half, our systematic CTA overlay proxy has rotated through its full range on the S&P 500, flagging deteriorating conditions ahead of both major drawdowns (the ~19% spring 2025 selloff and this year’s ~9% pullback from January highs) before rotating back to risk-on. It stayed Long-to-Max-Long through both subsequent rallies, running Max Long for the second, including the entire month of June as the index pushed to fresh highs.
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