Pre-markets Try Again, Begin Session in the Green

Friday, November 21, 2025

OK, let’s try this again: pre-market futures are up half a percentage point or more at this hour, with the Dow +259 points, the S&P 500 +34, the Nasdaq +122 and the small-cap Russell 2000 +20 points. You’ll of course recall we were in a similar position yesterday, only to see the strong open to the stock market slide away into negative territory and stay there. 

The AI infrastructure story is still front-of-mind, but the issue is how it’s being paid for. There doesn’t seem to be enough hard currency to go around in order to fund what is amounting to be half a trillion dollars in AI investment. NVIDIA NVDA proved the money is still good at its Q3 earnings report on Wednesday, but NVIDIA is also doing things like lending OpenAI the funds to purchase NVIDIA AI chips. How long can we expect that to be the case?

Same story with Bitcoin, which is even more precarious (for obvious reasons). Off its recent highs in the first week of October, when BTC looked as if it were headed to $125K per, the crypto staple has shed -32.3% of its value. Is it a buying opportunity? That depends — is it real money backstopping Bitcoin’s value, or is it more leverage and speculation?
 

What to Expect from the Stock Market Today

Aside from keeping one eye on market indexes overall — yesterday’s ski-slope was not fun to witness in real time — we do have some new economic data scheduled. It’s rather ideal, too: S&P flash Services and Manufacturing PMI for November is both important and unlikely to be majorly impactful. The same can be said for final November Consumer Sentiment, expected to tick up to 51.0, and the delayed Wholesale Inventories report for August.

Aside from this, we’ll see a bevy of appearances from Fed members, two and a half weeks prior to the next Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting. Odds are slipping that a 25 basis-point (bps) cut is in the works, which woulds being the Fed funds rate below 4% for the first time in three years. Among the no-doubt differing opinions will include Fed Presidents from New York (Williams), Boston (Collins), Dallas (Logan), Fed Governors Miran and Barr, and Fed Vice Chair Jefferson.

Next week is Thanksgiving Week, and as such will see no trading on Thursday and only a half-day on Friday. But we’ll also get the Fed’s preferred report on inflation, Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) for October, as well as some delayed reports from the government shutdown, including Retail Sales and Durable Goods Orders. Of these, only PCE numbers have the capacity to move markets, but they are among the least surprise-prone of all monthly economic data.

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