5 Things to Know Before the Stock Exchange Opens on Friday October 1st

Here are the most important news, trends and analysis that investors need to start their trading day:

Dow futures rose more than 150 points on Friday, breaking a previously sharp drop on the first day of October after its worst month of the year. The premarket trade kicked off good trial news on Merck’s oral Covid treatment. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which performed relatively better than the S&P 500 and Nasdaq during last week’s plunge, experienced its strongest 1.6% drop on Thursday. The S&P 500 fell about 1.2%. The Nasdaq, having received some relief from the decline in bond yields, fell 0.4%.

Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics plan to request an emergency authorization for their oral antiviral treatment for Covid after announcing “compelling results” in clinical trials. Dow Merck shares rose nearly 9% in premarket Friday. The companies said Friday that the drug molnupiravir reduces the risk of hospitalization or death by about 50% for patients with mild to moderate cases of Covid. Molnupiravir is administered orally and acts by inhibiting the replication of Covid in the body. Pfizer is working on its own oral antiviral drug. Gilead Sciences’ antiviral remdesivir, which is given through a drip, was approved for emergency use a year ago.

V The yield on 10-year Treasury bonds fell on Friday by about 1.5%. Earlier this week, the 10-year bond yield hit a three-month high above 1.567%. On Friday, the government released the inflation rate that the Federal Reserve uses to guide monetary policy. V basic personal consumption expenditure price index in August rose 3.6% year-on-year, slightly above forecasts and in line with July growth, which reached a 30-year high. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said this week that inflationary pressures could last longer than expected, citing supply chain bottlenecks as a key factor.

Congress prevented the government from shutting down until Thursday’s midnight deadline. President Joe Biden signed into law the federal operations financing bill before December 3. The adoption of the so-called permanent resolution avoided one crisis. But lawmakers still need to deal with something else: the looming threat of default unless Congress raises or suspends debt ceilings by Oct. 18. Democrats, who control both the House and Senate, have tried to fund the government and suspend the debt ceiling under the same bill. Senate Republicans blocked the law, forcing Democrats to meet funding needs first.

Biden failed to bring the Democrats out of the impasse that threatens his internal plans. A group of House progressive members and two centrist Democratic senators still parted ways on key issues late Thursday. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi originally scheduled a vote on the $ 1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by the Senate on Thursday, but postponed it because it had no votes to pass. Advocates at home are worried that if they pass an infrastructure bill championed by the moderates, they will lose leverage to nudge the moderates into supporting a transformative budget harmonization bill with a price tag of at least $ 3 trillion.