Stock futures were rising modestly Monday after equities rallied Friday on the last day of February, a month that saw the S&P 500 drop 1.4%. A focus for traders will be the implementation of fresh tariffs on major trading partners Canada and Mexico during the week and a doubling of levies on China.
These stocks were poised to make moves Monday:
SUPER MICRO COMPUTER INC was rising 1.3%. The maker of artificial-intelligence servers said Friday it will be building its third campus in California's Silicon Valley. Plans call for the campus, with construction expected to start this year, to be nearly 3 million square feet. The expansion, Super Micro said, would accelerate production of liquid-cooled services for data center, and create new jobs.
U.S.-listed shares of NIO Inc. were down 3.5%, XPeng Inc. fell 5%, and Li Auto dropped 8% even as the three Chinese electric-vehicle makers delivered almost 70,000 vehicles in February, up 112% year over year. NIO's deliveries jumped 62% last month from a year earlier, XPeng's deliveries soared 570% to 30,453, boosted by sales of its relatively new P7+ and MONA MO3 models, and Li Auto's deliveries rose 30%. The sales jumps show that demand for electric cars in China, the world's second-largest economy, remains strong and is a positive for any EV maker, including Tesla. The U.S. electric-vehicle company, however, has been struggling amid fierce competition.
Tesla Motors rose 1.6% in premarket trading. The stock rose 3.9% on Friday and snapped a six-session losing streak. February was Tesla's second-worst month ever, falling 28%. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in a post on X over the weekend, said he believes Tesla's profit can rise 1,000% in the coming five years, adding that it "will require outstanding execution."
Strategy jumped 12%, Coinbase Global, Inc. was up 9.4%, and Robinhood Markets gained 7.5% as the cryptocurrency-linked stocks followed Bitcoin higher after President Donald Trump said the world's largest crypto, along with Ethereum, Ripple, Solana, and Cardano would be part of a Crypto Strategic Reserve. In a post Truth Social post, Trump said his executive order would "move forward on a Crypto Strategic Reserve that includes XRP, SOL and ADA. I will make sure the U.S. is the Crypto Capital of the World." He later added Bitcoin, which has risen 6.8% to $91,897 over the past 24 hours, and Ethereum in a follow-up post.
NVIDIA was falling 1%. The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese buyers have been circumventing U.S. export controls to order the company's latest artificial-intelligence chips despite the restrictions.
European defense stocks such as Rheinmetall, up 11%, and BAE Systems, up 14%, traded higher overseas after European leaders over the weekend discussed plans to spend more on weapons as they work to forge a Ukraine peace plan.
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