Stocks waver as risk appetite cools; yen slumps

U.S. equity futures struggled for direction as risk appetite cooled from last week’s rally. The yen weakened after the Bank of Japan made its first unscheduled bond purchases in months.

Stock market activity was subdued on Monday, with investors taking a pause from the buying that sent the Nasdaq 100 Index up more than 2 per cent last week. Heineken NV slumped as much as 7.2 per cent after the Dutch brewer reduced its earnings forecast. Palantir Technologies Inc. jumped amid growing optimism over the software company’s exposure to artificial intelligence.

It’s the start of another busy week of earnings, with Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. among those reporting in the coming days. There’s also key economic data on the way that may provide clues on the outlook for interest rates, including U.S. July non-farm payrolls numbers due Friday, a day after a policy decision from the Bank of England. 

“The narrative that markets will be focused on is if it’s going to be a soft landing or not,” said Vivek Paul, senior portfolio strategist at BlackRock Investment Institute. “We’ll learn more about that once the upcoming data indicate if rapidly cooling inflation is indeed the start of a broader trend or it continues to be volatile.”