US pre-open: Futures lower as bitcoin breaks below $80k, metals rout continues
By Iain Gilbert
Date: Monday 02 Feb 2026
(Sharecast News) - Wall Street futures were in the red ahead of the bell on Monday as market participants were zeroed-in on bitcoin after a sell-off over the weekend.
As of 1230 GMT, Dow Jones futures were dowon 0.08%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 0.48% and 0.82% lower, respectively.
The Dow closed 179.09 points lower on Friday after Donald Trump announced Kevin Warsh as his nominee for head of the Federal Reserve and December's PPI report showed wholesale inflation rising sharply at end of 2025.
Bitcoin slipped back below $80,000 for the first time since April, and was last seen changing hands at just above $77,000, as investors pared risk following steep falls in precious metals at the end of last week. Silver, which has more than doubled over the past year, tumbled around 30% on Friday in its worst single‑day drop since 1980, while gold fell roughly 9%.
Rostro's Joshua Mahony said: "The price action seen over the course of the past three trading days has been nothing short of historic, with the nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed chair sending shockwaves throughout markets. Understandably, this appears to mark the end of easy money, with the repeated desire to shrink the Fed balance sheet and avoid constant monetary intervention meaning that markets could lose a key factor which has helped deliver the stable and consistent 10% average S&P 500 return. For a market which faces up to the possibility of an AI-led collapse at some point over the coming years, there is a concern over how things could play out if Warsh refuses to step in to limit the fallout if necessary.
"Nonetheless, Trump's joke that he would sue Warsh if he doesn't cut rates does highlight the contradiction that market concerns around a hawkish Fed Chair could also come with a flurry of cuts if his likely promises to the President are followed through on. After-all, Trump's insistence that Powell was 'too late' despite having cut rates repeatedly this year means that the President clearly has an expectation that whoever takes the hot seat will take dramatic steps to lift the economy despite the risk to inflation. Could the apparently hawkish Warsh provide exactly the kind of voice that the committee could follow if he pushes a dovish pathway for rates?"
Market participants were also tuned into tech giant Nvidia amid renewed questions over the outlook for artificial intelligence. According to the Wall Street Journal, the chipmaker's proposed $100bn investment in OpenAI has stalled, with senior executives now expressing doubts over the plan.
Elsewhere in the corporate space, Walt Disney said on Monday that first quarter revenues had landed at $26bn, up 5% year-on-year and generally in line with Wall Street expectations. Meanwhile, pre-tax income was flat year-on-year at $3.7bn.
Still to come, Palantir Technologies was set to release its latest quarterly figures after the close.
On the macro front, last month's S&P Global manufacturing purchasing managers index was slated for publication at 1445 GMT, while the January Institute for Suppyly Management manufacturing PMI will follow at 1500 GMT.
Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com
Email this article to a friend
or share it with one of these popular networks:
You are here: news
10 Lower Thames St,
London EC3R 6EN