Dollar Falls as Trump Pressures Powell; Futures Up: Markets Wrap

(Bloomberg) — The dollar fell as traders ramped up bets for faster US interest-rate cuts, spurred by a report that President Donald Trump may fast-track his nomination for the next Federal Reserve chief. Stock futures advanced.

A Bloomberg gauge of the greenback dropped 0.3% to the lowest level since April 2022. Treasury yields declined across the curve, with the 10-year rate down two basis points to 4.27%. Markets are pricing 64 basis points of easing from the Fed by the end of the year, compared to 51 basis points at the end of last week, with a 20% chance of a quarter-point cut next month.

Subscribe to the Stock Movers Podcast on Apple, Spotify and other Podcast Platforms.    

The moves followed a Wall Street Journal report that Trump may announce Jerome Powell’s replacement as soon as September, an unusually early appointment that may effectively create a shadow central bank chair with the power to influence sentiment. That has reinforced expectations of a more dovish-leaning Fed, after Trump repeatedly criticized Powell for holding rates steady.

The “discussion around naming a Fed chair early and that Fed chair presumably being more dovish, or willing to do a little more of what Trump wants to do in terms of cutting rates, it’s all going to weigh on rates and the dollar,” said Timothy Graf, head of EMEA macro strategy at State Street Global Markets.

The S&P 500 is poised to resume its advance toward an all-time high. Futures for the US benchmark gained 0.3% as technology stocks rose in premarket trading, with strong earnings from Micron Technology Inc. showing robust demand for chips powering artificial intelligence workloads. 

Micron climbed about 1.8%, while Nvidia Corp. is set to extend its advance into record territory, rising 1.3%.

“The Micron earnings are likely to boost tech again and when tech thrives, everything thrives,” said Pierre Alexis Dumont, chief investment officer at Sycomore Asset Management. “In that sense, we could reach a new record today.”

The dollar has tumbled more than 8% this year, as traders responded to on-again, off-again tariffs and raised broader questions about the role of the greenback in global trade.

“I don’t think there’s anything right now that stands in the way of a weaker dollar,” Thierry Wizman, a macro strategist at Macquarie Group in New York, told Bloomberg TV. 

Traders will focus Thursday on a slate of economic data, with durable goods numbers and revisions on quarterly gross domestic product and core personal consumption expenditures — the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge — among the figures due. 

Fed officials including Austan Goolsbee, Tom Barkin, Mary Daly, Beth Hammack and Michael Barr, are also set to speak.

“Markets will be looking to see if any of them also float the idea of a July rate cut,” said Tom Essaye, founder of The Sevens Report newsletter. “If so, it won’t make a July cut more likely, but it will further solidify expectations for a September cut, which might be a mild tailwind on stocks.”

Corporate Highlights:

• The Fed unveiled plans to roll back an important capital rule that big banks have said limits their ability to hold more Treasuries and act as intermediaries in the $29 trillion market.
• Shell Plc said it has no intention of making a takeover offer for BP Plc, refuting an earlier report that two of Europe’s biggest companies were in active merger talks.
• Hennes & Mauritz AB profit was buoyed by tighter cost control and demand for its women’s fashion and sportswear ranges in the second quarter, a sign Chief Executive Officer Daniel Erver’s turnaround strategy is finally progressing.
• The fraud allegations enveloping French payments firm Worldline SA have prompted questions from employees at Credit Agricole SA, who want to know why executives agreed to closer ties with the payment firm last year, Bloomberg News has reported.
• The market for Additional Tier 1 bonds has become so overheated that one of the world’s top holders of the risky bank debt is considering pulling back.
• Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is set to inject $10 billion in capital to its overseas unit to shore up its currency hedging operations, its biggest such move to counter a volatile local exchange rate.

Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

• S&P 500 futures rose 0.3% as of 7:41 a.m. New York time
• Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.4%
• Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.3%
• The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.2%
• The MSCI World Index rose 0.2%

Currencies

• The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.3%
• The euro rose 0.4% to $1.1700
• The British pound rose 0.3% to $1.3705
• The Japanese yen rose 0.6% to 144.39 per dollar

Cryptocurrencies

• Bitcoin fell 0.5% to $107,275.92
• Ether rose 0.3% to $2,447.3

Bonds

• The yield on 10-year Treasuries declined two basis points to 4.27%
• Germany’s 10-year yield declined two basis points to 2.54%
• Britain’s 10-year yield declined two basis points to 4.46%

Commodities

• West Texas Intermediate crude rose 0.5% to $65.24 a barrel
• Spot gold was little changed

This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.

–With assistance from Margaryta Kirakosian, Julien Ponthus and Henry Ren.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P.