Stocks looked set to tick up on Friday, as investors weighed up President Donald Trump’s move to tighten his grip on the Federal Reserve in a bid to get the central bank to favor aggressive interest rates.
Futures tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 98 points, or 0.2%. S&P 500 futures added 0.3%, and contracts tied to the Nasdaq 100 were also up 0.3% after the tech-heavy index hit a record close on Thursday.
The three blue-chip indexes were edging higher after Trump nominated White House Council of Economic Advisers chair Stephen Miran to the Fed’s Board of Governors, to replace the departing Adriana Kugler. The move gives Trump his first chance to reshape the central bank’s leadership.
The U.S. Dollar Index, which tracks the dollar against a weighted basket of its peers, was down 0.3% in early trading on Friday. If he’s confirmed by the Senate, Miran is expected to advocate a faster pace of rate cuts, which would likely cause the currency to depreciate further. He is also the the author of the Mar-A-Lago Accord, a plan to devalue the dollar.
“I struggle to see anything other than a bear case for the greenback,” Michael Brown, strategist at the foreign exchange brokerage Pepperstone, said Friday. “At this point, the play is simple. Sell the buck as capital outflows accelerate.”
Gold prices jumped 1.4% to $3,502 an ounce Friday after the Financial Times reported that the U.S. had imposed tariffs on one-kilo bars of the precious metal, citing a letter from the Customs Border Protection agency. The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note was flat at 4.26%.