Pre-Markets Mixed at Start of Prime Day, Awaiting Trade Deals

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Pre-market futures are mixed at this hour, bouncing around a bit without much guidance from economic reports or a stream of Q2 earnings results as of yet. (The Big Banks like JPMorgan JPM and Citigroup C report next Tuesday; Delta Air Lines DAL is expected on Thursday.) (You can see the full Zacks Earnings Calendar here.)

Right now, the Dow is -69 points, the S&P 500 is +2 points, the Nasdaq +41 and the small-cap Russell 2000 is up +7 points. Bond yields are climbing a bit from the start of the week: +4.43% on the 10-year and +3.91% on the 2-year. The shorter-term yield is roughly in the middle of where it’s been the past month, while the 10-year is a tad higher than the median.
 

Small-Business Confidence Ticks Down a Tad

Early this morning, the latest monthly NFIB Small-Business Optimism Index for June has come out, registering a headline of 98.6 — down a tad from the 98.8 posted a month ago and the 98.7 anticipated, but still remaining above the more than half-century average of 98. The Uncertainty Index dropped 5 points month over month to 89.

Taxes were considered the biggest problem for small businesses last month: +19% of those surveyed said so. This is the highest we’ve seen since July 2021, and overtakes inflation and labor quality as small business owners’ biggest concern currently. Perhaps these concerns will be cooled now that the biggest tax cut bill in memory has been passed.
 

What to Expect from the Stock Market Today

It’s Amazon AMZN Prime Day starting today and running through Friday. This is the first year (Prime Day began in 2015) has expanded to four consecutive days; it doubled from one to two days back in 2017. Growth for Prime Day had begun to wane in past years, but last year it grew +11% to $14.2 billion. Compare this with the first-ever Prime Day, which fetched $0.9 billion.

Perhaps we’ll see trade deals being finalized with U.S. trading partners today, as the supposed “deadline” for reciprocal tariffs brought about on “Liberation Day” April 2nd were paused for 90 days one week later (check the stock market around that time for why). U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent yesterday suggested many trade deals are imminent in the coming days, but with nothing more than a couple trade outlines to show for this 89-day pause so far, we’ll believe it when we see it.

When the closing bell sounds this afternoon, Consumer Credit for May will hit the tape. Expectations are for a significant drawdown from $17.87 billion the prior month to $10.0 billion this time around. But these monthly figures can be rather volatile: we saw negative prints for February of this year and November of last year, with December 2024 rocketing up to $37.05 billion.

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