Ringside · Pre-Bell · August 24
- Washington's 50% duties on Canadian goods took effect Saturday; Ottawa has promised to match them
- Samsung's payout plan cost the Kospi 3.12%, and Sandisk trades 4.8% lower before the open
- Bessent details the Iran sanctions at 2 p.m. Eastern, with crude down about 2% into the announcement
Indexes
Two weekend stories are pulling American futures in opposite directions, and the split shows up cleanly below. Trade talks between the United States and Canada collapsed late Friday night, taking Washington's threatened 50% duties from hypothetical to live and sending domestic steel and aluminium producers sharply higher before the open. Working the other way is Seoul, where Samsung Electronics fell 8.7% on a shareholder return plan investors did not like, dragging the Kospi down 3.12% and pulling American memory and optical names with it. Almost all of the damage sits in the Nasdaq contract.
| Futures | Level | % Chg | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| ES (S&P 500) | 7,673.75 | -0.23% | |
| NQ (Nasdaq 100) | 29,203.00 | -0.63% | Weakest of the four |
| YM (Dow) | 53,296.00 | -0.11% | Steel names help here |
| RTY (Russell 2000) | 3,016.90 | -0.17% | Holds 3,000 |
Those levels were read at 6:45 a.m. Eastern and measured against Friday's settlements. Europe has largely shrugged: Britain, Germany and France are each trading within a quarter of a percent of Friday's close as the London morning runs, which earns them a sentence instead of four table rows.
| Asia | Close | % Chg | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kospi | 6,696.96 | -3.12% | Samsung led it down |
| Hang Seng | 25,517.33 | -1.89% | Alibaba placement weighed |
| CSI 300 | 4,563.13 | -1.21% | |
| Nikkei 225 | 65,528.09 | -0.74% |
In the News
Rates, FX, Commodities
Long-dated Treasuries finished last week close to where the current selloff peaked, and that is the backdrop against which every high-multiple growth stock is being marked this morning.
| Treasury | Yield | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 2-Year | 4.19% | Thursday's H.15 reading |
| 5-Year | 4.424% | |
| 10-Year | 4.738% | Highest close of August |
| 30-Year | 5.276% | Under August 17's 5.309% |
Three of those four are Friday closes drawn from a single benchmark series. Thursday's H.15 release supplies the two-year, being the most recent the Federal Reserve has published, and the ten-year sits roughly 55 basis points above it.
| Commodity / FX | Level | % Chg |
|---|---|---|
| WTI crude (Oct) | $85.28 | -2.04% |
| Brent crude | $93.03 | -1.44% |
| Gold (Dec) | $4,698.20 | +0.38% |
| Natural gas (Oct) | $2.839 | +1.00% |
| Dollar Index | 99.001 | +0.20% |
| EUR/USD | 1.1670 | -0.07% |
| USD/JPY | 159.164 | +0.14% |
Every line above is a screen quote taken just before the New York seven o'clock hour, not an exchange settlement, and crude is the October contract. The oil price deserves a second look: both benchmarks are falling into an announcement designed to remove Iranian supply from the market. CNBC attributes that to positioning ahead of the detail, which is another way of saying traders think a blockade already in place is doing most of what fresh paperwork can do.
Technicals
A 7,674.37 close on Friday put the S&P 500 0.39% over its 20-day line of 7,644.43, and the 50-day sits 1.77% lower near 7,541.05. The August 13 closing high of 7,798.99 is 1.6% away. Weaker again is the Nasdaq 100, which ended at 29,308.86, or 0.05% under a 50-day average of 29,324.90, a line it also failed to hold on Thursday. Futures imply an opening print near 29,200, which would bring the 20-day at 29,146.17 into the conversation.
Government bonds offer less ambiguity. Friday's 4.738% on the ten-year was its highest close of August, and the thirty-year at 5.276% ended 3.3 basis points beneath the 5.309% of August 17, the peak of the current move.
Breakouts
Nucor (NUE) is indicated at $252.63, which would put it back over a 50-day average of $248.15 that it lost on August 20. The 20-day at $263.39 sits 4.3% higher. Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF) at an indicated $11.44 would open above both its 50-day average of $11.12 and its 200-day at $11.36.
Steel Dynamics (STLD) is the exception in that group. Even a 4.51% gain to $238.99 leaves it 3.2% under a 50-day average of $246.90, because the five sessions behind it produced a 10.59% decline.
Breakdowns
Micron (MU) reclaimed its 50-day average on Friday and is set to lose it again immediately, with the indicated $933.81 sitting 3.2% under a line at $964.59. Coherent (COHR) is the more advanced case: an indicated $276.35 puts it 9.2% under its 20-day, 16.2% under the 50-day, and within 2.4% of a 200-day average at $269.83 that it last closed beneath on July 30.
Top Movers
Gainers
Steel Dynamics (STLD), indicated +4.51% at $238.99. The collapse of the talks removes the scenario that hit the sector hardest this month, a reported provision cutting duties on Canadian steel and aluminium from 50% to 25%. That report knocked roughly 7% off the shares on August 19. Friday's 4.42% recovery came before the talks formally broke.
Nucor (NUE), indicated +3.73% at $252.63. Nucor closed at $248.74 in that same August 19 session and is down 9.4% over five days. It sells into the identical domestic market, and the tariff arithmetic governing both has moved back in their favour.
Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF), indicated +1.51% at $11.44. The smaller move fits a company that bought the Canadian steelmaker Stelco for $2.5 billion in 2024 and therefore owns capacity on the wrong side of the new wall.
Losers
Sandisk (SNDK), indicated -4.84% at $1,518.89. No company announcement accompanies the decline. What happened instead was Samsung's shareholder proposal in Seoul, and American memory names have tracked Korean ones closely all year. Seagate (STX) at $821.40 is indicated 3.36% lower, so the group is moving together.
Lumentum (LITE), indicated -4.72% at $825.79. The optical suppliers are having a worse August than the chipmakers they sell into. Lumentum has fallen 6.42% over five sessions and Coherent 11.14%, and neither carries company news this morning, in what looks like the unwinding of a trade that doubled these stocks this year. Corning (GLW) at $144.70 is indicated 3.44% lower.
Micron (MU), indicated -3.41% at $933.81. Micron has crossed its 50-day average three times this month, each time in the direction long-dated yields were travelling that week. Friday produced August's highest ten-year close, and Seoul supplied the second reason before dawn. Marvell (MRVL) at $229.50 is indicated 3.18% lower, adding to Friday's 5.57% decline.
Stellantis (STLA), indicated -2.59% at $5.27. The automakers are the clearest losers from the Canadian breakdown, given how many vehicles and parts cross that border repeatedly during assembly. General Motors (GM) is indicated 1.05% lower. Ford (F) is indicated 0.07% higher, Canadian Pacific (CP) 0.34% lower and Canadian National (CNI) 0.08% higher, because Washington carved energy, potash and critical minerals out of the new duties.
Key Macro Data Today
The calendar is nearly empty, which leaves the 2 p.m. press conference as the scheduled event that matters.
| Release | Time (ET) | Consensus | Prior |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago Fed National Activity Index (Jul) | 8:30 | — | -0.02 |
The Chicago Fed index averages 85 monthly indicators, most of them already published, so it rarely moves anything. Tuesday brings new home sales and the Case-Shiller house price index.
Earnings Today
Two Chinese companies report before the open, and nothing of note follows the close.
Pre-Open
PDD Holdings (PDD) publishes second-quarter results with a call at 7:30 a.m. Eastern, and analysts are looking for revenue near $17.1 billion. PDD has come in below the consensus earnings estimate in each of its last two reports, by roughly 40% in May and by the mid-teens in March. XPeng (XPEV) follows at 8:00, having already disclosed 103,295 second-quarter deliveries, up 64.8% from the first quarter but level with a year ago, against guidance of 19.6 billion to 20.8 billion yuan.
Post-Close
Nothing scheduled.
Drivers
- Canada's retaliation list is published and dated. Ottawa will match the American duties dollar for dollar from September 8, targeting dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, and electronics, according to the Associated Press. That leaves two weeks for quiet diplomacy, and Prime Minister Mark Carney called the American move a miscalculation while suspending the talks rather than ending them. Trade between the two countries ran to $376 billion in the first half of this year, per Census figures.
- Secretary Bessent speaks at 2 p.m. Eastern. The measures are expected to lean heavily on secondary sanctions against third parties handling Iranian trade, which is where the practical bite would be. Crude entering that announcement about 2% lower says the market has already discounted a great deal of it, and a package that surprises on severity has an unusually clear path to reversing the morning's move.
- Nvidia (NVDA) reports Wednesday after the close, and Kevin Warsh speaks in Wyoming on Friday. The two bookend a week in which AI hardware is already being sold, and Alibaba's $10.2 billion raise, coming days after it disclosed a 75% jump in capital spending, is the kind of evidence that makes Wednesday's number carry more weight than usual. Nvidia closed Friday at $214.72, holding a 50-day average of $207.58 and sitting 8.9% below its 52-week closing high of $235.74.