Stock Futures Trade Slightly Higher as Investors Weigh Trump Shooting
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Stocks are poised for a slightly higher open on Monday, the first look at how U.S. markets will react following the failed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
Trump was recovering Sunday, a day after a shooting at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania that injured Trump and left one attendee dead and two others critically injured.
Investors aren’t showing heightened concern, as far as moves in stock futures are reflecting on Sunday. At 6:46 p.m. ET, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures gained 60 points, or 0.2%, the S&P 500 futures rose 0.1%; and Nasdaq Composite futures were up 0.1%.
Republicans are converging in Milwaukee this week to formally nominate Trump as their party’s presidential candidate. The Republican National Convention is moving forward as an investigation into the shooting continues.
Futures also were extending a rally that has lifted stocks to fresh highs this year, fueled by earnings and a surge in tech shares.
Forty-five S&P 500 companies report earnings this week, including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs on Monday.
Bank of America , Charles Schwab , J.B. Hunt Transport Services , Morgan Stanley , Omnicom Group , PNC Financial Services Group , State Street, and UnitedHealth Group report earnings on Tuesday.
ASML Holding , Citizens Financial Group , Crown Castle , Discover Financial Services , Elevance Health , Equifax , Johnson & Johnson , Kinder Morgan , Northern Trust , Prologis , Steel Dynamics , Synchrony Financial , United Airlines Holdings , and U.S. Bancorp all report earnings on Wednesday.
Abbott Laboratories , Alaska Air Group , Blackstone, Cintas, D.R. Horton, Domino’s Pizza , Intuitive Surgical , KeyCorp , M&T Bank , Marsh & McLennan , Netflix , Novartis , Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing , and Textron report earnings on Thursday.
American Express , Fifth Third Bancorp , Halliburton , Huntington Bancshares , Regions Financial , SLB, and Travelers report on Friday.
This week’s notable economic events include Monday’s release of the Empire State Manufacturing Survey by the New York Fed. Later today, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will speak at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly will speak at Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2024.
On Tuesday, the Census Bureau reports June retail sales data, and the National Association of Home Builders will release its Housing Market Index for July. Also Tuesday, Fed Gov. Adriana Kuglar will speak at the National Association for Business Economics’ Economic Measurement Seminar in Washington, D.C.
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve will release the fifth of eight Beige Books with anecdotal information on current economic conditions from the 12 regional banks. Also Wednesday, the Census Bureau will report new residential construction statistics, including housing starts and building permits, for June.
On Thursday, the Philadelphia Fed will release the Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey for July; the Conference Board will report its Leading Economic Index for June; and the Labor Department will report initial unemployment claims for the week ended July 13. Also Thursday, the European Central Bank will publish a monetary policy decision. The ECB is widely expected to keep its target interest rate at 3.75%, after cutting it by a quarter of a percentage point in June.
On Friday, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic will speak at a conference co-sponsored by the Federal Reserve Banks of Dallas and Atlanta, and New York Fed President Williams will speak at a panel on monetary policy at the Central Bank of Peru’s annual conference in Cusco, Peru, on the Rewiring of the Global Economy.
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Gold miners are emerging as a compelling way to navigate market uncertainty, with analysts pointing to strong cash flows, attractive valuations and rising profit margins. As gold prices stabilize above US$4,000 an ounce, mining stocks could offer investors both downside protection and long-term upside.
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Gold is one of the market’s go-to hedges in rocky times. Don’t forget that gold miners’ stocks are too.
The stock market’s gains in 2026 belie the rocky macroeconomic picture: elevated inflation, heightened geopolitical tensions, and jitters about the artificial-intelligence trade. That backdrop, in theory, should be the time for gold to shine. Instead, the price of the yellow metal has tumbled more than 5% so far, after last year’s blistering 65% rally. In part, the U.S. dollar’s recovery has stymied gold, which benefited from the greenback’s weakness in 2025.
Even with the precious metal’s recent weakness, gold mining stocks could be the best way to profit from this year’s uncertainty.
Gold miners “are a valuable hedge against macro risks that would likely be damaging for equities,” BCA Research’s Noah Weisberger and Rishabh Shah wrote this week.
Concerns about the Federal Reserve’s next moves to tackle inflation, the increasingly crowded AI trade, and steep valuations for tech stocks are just some of the drivers that could help gold’s price get on even footing— and lead to even bigger gains for miner stocks.
These stocks’ prices tend to outpace gold’s moves, because the companies have fixed operational costs. So when gold’s price rallies, their profit margins soar, and vice versa. For instance, the VanEck Gold Miners GDX +7.39% exchange-traded fund has fallen 11% this year as the metal has slumped.
Now, gold’s price just needs to stabilize to help miners’ stocks take off, and that seems to be happening. The precious metal has recently found support above the $4,000 level, and has stuck in a narrow range since the end of June. But its price rose ever so slightly in July, ending a four-month losing streak for the metal. Technical analysis also suggests that gold is due for a comeback.
Barron’s recently wrote that the pullbacks for both gold miners and the metal itself are overdone. Senior technical analyst Doug Busch noted that the VanEck ETF is on the “verge of a breakout” and has the potential to hit $11o in early 2027, up more than 40% from its current price.
Gold miners also have more than their role as a market hedge going for them. Their fundamentals are solid, too, says Chris Mancini, portfolio co-manager of the Gabelli Gold Fund.
“Precious metals miners are generating substantial amounts of free cash flow given profit margins of over $2,000 per ounce, and are returning this cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends,” he said in an email.
“Buying the miners is a cheap way to get exposure to the price of gold,” he added. His fund owns Newmont NEM +6.71%, a Barron’s stock pick last year, and Agnico Eagle Mines as top holdings, as well as miners Northern Star Resources, Endeavour Mining, and Kinross Gold K+8.59%.
Miners are better businesses than they used to be, the BCA team added.
“Capex is more disciplined, margins are high and rising…and they are largely independent of the AI story,” Weisberger, BCA’s head of equities, and Shah, a senior analyst, wrote.
That last part is key. AI is disrupting the software industry and many other services and information-oriented businesses, and investors have piled into AI stocks. But ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and other large-language models aren’t going to replace the need to mine for metals.
“Equity portfolios can benefit from exposure to quality that is uncorrelated to AI risk, and gold miners fit the bill,” the BCA team said.
They recommend that investors buy the VanEck Gold Miners ETF, which owns top miners such as Agnico, Barrick Mining ABX +7.24%, and Newmont.
An important bonus for big gold miners’ stocks is that their valuations are attractive after the gold’s pullback, too. The VanEck ETF is now trading at just a little more than nine times next year’s earnings estimates. That’s a big discount to its five-year average price-to-earnings ratio of 14, according to FactSet.
What’s more, the ETF is currently valued at a more than 50% discount to the S&P 500 SPX -0.17%, which is trading for about 19 times earnings estimates for 2027. Mining stocks have typically traded at just a 25% discount to the broader market over the past five years. So there is significant upside for the group if valuations move back toward normal levels.
One factor that complicates mining stocks as a market hedge, of course, is if stocks bounce back, which has been the case so far in August.
But both the market and economic outlooks remain cloudy, and investors remain nervous about the Fed’s next moves and AI stocks. Gold miners should do just fine, even if the anxious mood on Wall Street persists.
On October 2, acclaimed chef Dan Arnold will host an exclusive evening, unveiling a Michelin-inspired menu in a rare masterclass of food, storytelling and flavour.
Barnet, in North London, lays claim to two of the country’s most expensive roads to own a home.
