Factory Orders, Speeches From Fed Governor Cook, Nvidia CEO Huang

Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Monday, Jan. 6.

State of Play

As we eye our board of indicators for signs of direction at 0645, it looks like risk assets want to rally:

• Stock index futures are moving higher, led by tech. The Nasdaq is pointing to a gain of 1% at the open. S&P 500 futures are 0.7% to the good;

• Commodities are also showing signs of life, with copper up 1.7%. WTI crude oil is up <0.5% to trade around $74/barrel;

• Cryptos have resumed their ascent. Bitcoin is up 1.7% to trade north of $99,000 again;

• Bonds are unchanged. The 2-year yields 4.26% whilst the 10-year yields 4.59%.

Today’s Known Events

It’s a quiet start to a massive week. Fourth-quarter earnings season kicks off and Friday brings non-farm payrolls. We’ll also get FOMC meeting minutes on Wednesday.

For today we just have:

• Fed Governor Lisa Cook speaks at the University of Michigan Law School’s 7th Conference on Law & Macroeconomics at 0915. Cook is a full-fledged FOMC voting member this year. She is seen as a dovish member of the FOMC;

• Factory orders at 1000. Economists who were surveyed expect a decline of 0.3% month-over-month after a 0.2% increase last month;

• Total vehicle sales, also at 1000. The expectation here is for 16.5 million transactions, effectively the same as last month;

• Jensen Huang, Nvidia (NVDA 0.00%↑) CEO, speaks at 2130 tonight at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

  (All times eastern)

‘Factory orders scrutinized by trader’ by author via Grok AI