Stock Futures Today: Markets Rebound Before Earnings, Jobs
Meta description: US stock futures edged higher Sunday night ahead of a packed week featuring the midterm elections, Apple earnings and the October jobs report.
The stock futures today picture, as American markets prepared to open on Monday, November 2, 2026, was one of cautious recovery. After a bruising week in which technology shares led Wall Street lower, futures tied to the major indexes moved higher on Sunday night, setting up a week that traders already knew would be unusually crowded: midterm elections on Tuesday, a run of heavyweight earnings led by Apple on Monday, and the October jobs report on Friday. None of those events, on its own, would be enough to define a market week. Together, they make this one of the most consequential five-day stretches of the year for investors, and Sunday night’s modest rebound was best read as a pause for breath before the news flow begins, not as a verdict on where the week will end.
The rebound itself was modest, and its size varied with the hour at which it was measured. Early on Sunday evening, futures on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 were each up about 0.2 percent, while Dow Jones futures gained roughly 100 to 116 points, also about 0.2 percent. By early Monday trading, other snapshots put the gains a little higher: S&P 500 futures up about 0.4 to 0.5 percent, Nasdaq futures up about 0.8 to 0.9 percent, and Dow futures up about 0.3 percent. Those differences do not reflect disagreement about the direction of travel; they reflect the fact that futures trade around the clock and that each snapshot catches a different moment. The direction, in every snapshot, was the same: higher, after a week in which every major index had fallen.
That context — a rebound after a fall, rather than a rally from strength — is essential to understanding Monday’s mood. Investors were not celebrating. They were reassessing, after a month in which the market’s leadership had narrowed, its technology giants had stumbled, and its assumptions about artificial intelligence spending had been tested. The week ahead will test those assumptions again, company by company and data point by data point, and the first test arrives within hours of the opening bell.
Stock Market Today: Sunday Night’s Rebound in Context
To judge Sunday night’s move fairly, it helps to place it against the week that preceded it. The S&P 500 and the Dow each fell by less than 1 percent over the previous week — about 0.57 percent for the S&P 500 and about 0.85 percent for the Dow, on the figures cited in Monday coverage — while the Nasdaq Composite fell about 2 percent. Friday itself was the worst session in four months, according to one market briefing: the S&P 500 fell 1.8 percent, the Dow declined 1.1 percent, and the Nasdaq dropped 2.9 percent. Technology led the sell-off, with Intel plunging about 28.6 percent on Friday, Reddit losing about 29.2 percent, and AMD falling about 10.9 percent, while a handful of defensive names, including FedEx Freight and Regeneron, managed gains.
The month of October told a similar story of rotation rather than uniform decline. The Nasdaq recorded its worst monthly fall since March 2025 in one account, and since early 2025 in another — the difference reflects the precise window used, but the message is the same: October was a poor month for technology. The Dow, by contrast, gained nearly 2 percent in October, helped by a rotation into defensive areas such as healthcare. One striking statistic from the week, calculated by Yahoo Finance and cited in Monday coverage, captured the split: the largest artificial intelligence and semiconductor stocks shed about 5 trillion dollars in market value since October 6, while the other 625 large American stocks tracked in the same tally added roughly 1.3 trillion dollars. In nine of the eleven S&P 500 sectors, stocks gained 1 percent or more during the week, a pattern of internal strength not seen in a down week for the index since at least 1999, on the same calculation. The market, in other words, was not falling across the board. It was falling where the year’s biggest bets had been placed, and holding up elsewhere.
That distinction matters for how to read the futures rebound. A broad market recovery would suggest that investors had put their worries behind them. A technology-led rebound after a technology-led sell-off suggests something narrower: that some traders saw value after the fall, that others were covering short positions, and that the market as a whole was waiting for fresh evidence before committing. The evidence arrives quickly this week, and the first and most watched piece of it comes from the world’s most valuable company.
Nasdaq Today: Apple Earnings Lead a Packed Week
Apple reports quarterly results on Monday after the market closes, and its report carries more weight than a single company’s numbers normally would. The company finished Friday with a market capitalisation of about 5.03 trillion dollars, compared with about 4.93 trillion dollars for Nvidia, making it once again the world’s most valuable listed company. Its shares are up roughly 27 percent so far this year, outperforming the S&P 500’s gain of about 11 percent. Analysts, on the figures cited in Monday briefings, expect quarterly earnings of about 2 dollars per share on revenue of about 113 billion dollars, compared with earnings of 1.85 dollars per share a year earlier. The report will also be read for guidance and for early signals about demand for the new iPhone 18, which matters not only for Apple but for the wider consumer-electronics and semiconductor supply chains.
Apple is not alone on Monday’s earnings calendar. Palantir also reports after the close, offering a very different read on technology demand: where Apple speaks to consumer spending and the holiday season, Palantir speaks to adoption of artificial intelligence software by businesses and governments. The contrast between the two reports, delivered on the same evening, will give investors a broader sense of whether technology spending is holding up beyond the hardware cycle. Later in the week, AMD reports on Tuesday, with Arm and Qualcomm following on Wednesday, alongside results from Amgen, Pfizer, McDonald’s, Uber, and others, and Berkshire Hathaway due on Friday. For semiconductor investors in particular, the sequence matters: after Intel’s near-29 percent plunge on Friday, AMD’s results now carry added weight, because traders need to see how demand is translating into revenue, margins, and guidance across different chip businesses.
The earnings season also sits against a specific anxiety that has built up through October: the cost of artificial intelligence. Selling pressure in technology resumed late last week after Alphabet and Microsoft issued lower-than-expected capital expenditure forecasts, while Amazon maintained its full-year spending guidance. The market’s question, in plain terms, is whether the enormous sums being spent on data centres, chips, and power will produce returns quickly enough to justify the valuations attached to the companies spending them. Earnings reports do not answer that question in full, but they provide the raw material — revenue growth, margins, guidance, and spending plans — from which investors build their answers. A strong Apple report would not settle the AI debate, but it would steady the consumer side of the technology story. A weak one would deepen the sense that even the strongest companies are not immune to the month’s pressures.
Jobs Report: Friday’s Payrolls and the Data Calendar
If earnings dominate the early part of the week, economic data dominates its second half, and the most important release is the October jobs report, due on Friday. Economists polled by Dow Jones expect a gain of 55,000 jobs, on the figures cited in Monday coverage. That number, modest by the standards of recent years, will be read for what it says about the health of the labour market at a moment when investors are also watching interest rates and inflation. A stronger-than-expected report could reinforce the case for higher interest rates for longer; a weaker one could raise questions about growth. Either way, the report lands at the end of a week in which traders will already have absorbed election results and a string of earnings, so its effect will depend on what has come before it as much as on the number itself.
The data calendar leading up to Friday is busy in its own right. Monday brings the ISM manufacturing survey, Tuesday brings job openings data, Wednesday brings the ISM services survey and the ADP employment report, and several Federal Reserve officials are scheduled to speak during the week, offering further insight into the central bank’s thinking. Bond markets, meanwhile, were calmer than equities: the yield on the ten-year Treasury stood near 4.93 to 4.94 percent on Monday, below its October peak, with the two-year yield around 4.61 percent, and markets were pricing roughly a 72 percent probability of a December rate increase, according to one Monday briefing. Central banks elsewhere are also in focus this week, with rate decisions due from Australia, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Sweden, adding a global dimension to a week that is already crowded with American news.
The jobs report also matters because of what it is not. It is a single month’s data, subject to revision, and it arrives in a labour market whose structure has been changing — with hiring concentrated in some sectors, weak in others, and sensitive to the same technology spending cycle that is moving share prices. Investors who treat Friday’s number as a definitive verdict on the economy will over-read it. Those who treat it as one more piece of evidence, to be set alongside earnings, surveys, and central-bank signals, will use it better. The market’s own behaviour on Monday — a modest rebound, not a surge — suggests that most traders are, for now, in the second camp: waiting, watching, and unwilling to commit heavily before the data arrives.
Dow Jones Today: Midterms Add Political Uncertainty
Running underneath the earnings and data calendar is a political event that could reshape the market’s assumptions for the rest of the year and beyond: the midterm elections on Tuesday, November 3. Polls cited in Monday coverage suggested the possibility of a Democratic sweep of both the Senate and the House, and one market report noted that President Donald Trump had refused to accept any adverse outcome, stating that he would veto measures he opposed. The elections matter to markets for concrete reasons, not merely as political theatre: control of Congress determines what legislation can pass, what spending can be approved, and what regulatory direction the next two years will take, including for the data-centre development and technology policy that have become central to the AI investment story. One Monday briefing noted that a Democratic victory in either chamber could create additional political obstacles for data-centre development, a reminder that the market’s technology bet is also, in part, a policy bet.
Veteran market voices were, on Monday, striking a balance between near-term caution and longer-term optimism. Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson told Bloomberg in an interview cited in Monday coverage that a combination of election uncertainty, AI-related stress, and liquidity concerns could pull the S&P 500 down to the 7,100 level, but that once that stress cleared, he would expect the index to move back toward 8,000 and that he remained bullish overall. That framing — a possible dip, followed by recovery — matches the market’s own behaviour on Sunday night: a rebound that acknowledges the risks without dismissing them. It is also a useful corrective to the idea that a single week, however crowded, determines a market’s direction. Elections pass, earnings seasons end, and jobs reports are revised. The market’s longer path is set by earnings growth, interest rates, and policy over months and years, not by any one Tuesday.
There are, of course, other forces at work this week that could move markets in ways that have little to do with earnings or elections. Oil offered some relief on Monday, with Brent crude down about 2 percent to around 111 dollars a barrel and West Texas Intermediate down about 2.3 percent to around 102 dollars, on hopes of more time for diplomacy over Iran — a story covered separately in this publication’s energy reporting. Bitcoin recovered above 78,000 dollars following the phased reopening of Binance, after the exchange reported 3.64 billion dollars in net customer withdrawals and said it had replaced 95 percent of the 6.3 billion dollars stolen in the largest crypto hack on record. Asian markets also rebounded on Monday, with South Korea gaining 2.6 percent, China’s blue-chip index rising 1.3 percent, and Japan advancing 0.3 percent. None of those moves, on its own, explains the American futures rebound, but together they describe a global market that, on Monday, was stabilising after a difficult month rather than breaking down further.
What Happens Next for Stock Futures Today
The week ahead will answer, in sequence, the questions that Sunday night’s rebound left open. Monday’s close will bring Apple’s numbers and Palantir’s, and the market’s reaction in after-hours trading will set the tone for Tuesday. Tuesday brings the elections and AMD’s results, a combination of political and corporate news that could pull the market in different directions at once. Wednesday brings services data and more chip earnings. Friday brings the jobs report and Berkshire Hathaway’s results, closing a week that began with a rebound and could end in a very different place.
For ordinary investors, the practical lesson of a week like this is restraint. Futures moves on a Sunday night are small, they reverse easily, and they are driven by traders positioning for events rather than by the events themselves. The numbers that matter — earnings per share, revenue, guidance, payrolls, election outcomes — have not yet arrived, and when they do, they will arrive one at a time, each with its own interpretation and its own market reaction. The temptation to trade on the rebound itself, or to read it as a prediction, should be resisted. The rebound is a starting point, not a forecast.
What can be said with confidence is that this week will be informative. By Friday evening, investors will know who controls Congress, how Apple and the chipmakers are faring, whether the labour market added roughly the expected number of jobs, and whether the technology sell-off of October was a correction within a continuing advance or the start of something more sustained. They will also know whether the modest recovery in futures on Sunday night was the beginning of a steadier period or merely a pause between bouts of selling. Until then, the market’s message is a cautious one: higher, for now, with the real tests still to come.
Source: CNBC