Dow futures advance after Trump-EU tariff delay ahead of Nvidia, Salesforce earnings

Though markets are closed in the United States (US) for the Memorial Day holiday, stock investors bored with barbecue and checking their phones will notice that the futures market has shifted bullish ahead of the Tuesday open. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100 have all advanced around 1% or more on Monday after US President Donald Trump walked back last week's harsh tariff rhetoric.

At the time of writing, Dow futures are up 1.08%, while the NASDAQ 100 futures advance 1.52%.

On Sunday afternoon, Trump posted on Truth Social that he had agreed to push his earlier deadline of June 1 to July 9 for a trade deal with the European Union (EU). The Dow Jones shed 2.5% last week as Trump raised the specter of 50% tariffs on the EU due to flagging movement on a trade deal.

Trump post on Truth Social on May 25, 2025

It appears from his post that discussions with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen led Trump to quickly buckle under pressure. Trump moving to delay the earlier June 1 deadline leads the market to expect a less harsh tariff on European goods seven weeks from now. Trump originally tariffed the EU at 20% in early April before walking it back to 10% as negotiations got underway.

Harsh rhetoric followed by delay and reduced tariff rates has been the trend since early April, and this will be more fuel for equity bulls, who are ready to toss aside worries over Trump's ongoing global trade war.

UBS Chief Economist Paul Donovan said as much: "These retreats are so frequent that investors should rationally expect them."

Still, Donovan believes that the threats work to create an air of uncertainty for the markets. "First, even if no one thinks the threats will be carried out, firms will need to put in place some insurance. [...] Second, wild swings in policy making increase risks in markets - and a general sense of unpredictability requires a risk premium."

Stock market news: 30-year Treasuries

Bank of America has started the week by offering up a surprising contrarian trade on Memorial Day. Analysts at the bank say to go long 30-year US Treasuries while sentiment is overwhelmingly negative.

Michael Hartnett pointed to the 30-year Treasury ending last Friday at a 5.04% yield, its highest level since October 2023 and, before that, the summer of 2007.

This yield level is "negative for today's highly 'financialized' US economy relative to Rest-of-World, and bond vigilantes are incentivized to punish unambiguously unsustainable path of debt & deficit," wrote Hartnett.

Hartnett thinks the so-called "bond vigilantes" will eventually push the 5-year, now at 4.09%, back toward 3% and that the 30-year will travel in the same direction toward a sustainable level. Of course, lower Treasury yields are good for equity prices as they move inversely.

Investors will welcome some insight into the path of Treasuries as the Federal Reserve's (Fed) Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is set to release its Meeting Minutes from its early May decision to keep interest rates unchanged. Traders will try to discern if the central bank cares more about inflation or about unemployment, its two primary mandates.

Stock market news: Nvidia, Salesforce earnings

Another note on the calendar is keeping investors upbeat. Two of the Dow Jones' tech stars are scheduled to release quarterly results after the close on Wednesday. That means that Tuesday is likely to see traders buying up both stocks.

Nvidia (NVDA) is scheduled to earn $0.73 in adjusted earnings per share (EPS) on revenue of $43.17 billion. The EPS figure is an 18% decline from the fourth quarter as Nvidia deals with new trade barriers on its H20 chip, an AI chip built to meet Biden-era export restrictions. The Trump administration then also blocked sales of the H20 to China, but Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has made statements recently that the White House is rethinking its overall strategy on export bans.

However, the EPS forecast is still up nearly 20% compared with the same quarter a year ago. The revenue projection is up 66% from a year earlier, demonstrating how strong demand is for Nvidia's AI product suite. Oracle (ORCL) announced last week that it plans to purchase $40 billion alone of Nvidia AI chips to power a new OpenAI data center in Texas. Nvidia stock is down over 2% year to date.

Salesforce (CRM) stock, down over 18% year to date, is expected to report $2.55 in adjusted EPS in Q1, up 4.5% from a year earlier. Revenue is projected to come in at $9.75 billion, up 6.8% from a year earlier. The market will look to the level of growth in its new Agentforce platform.

NVDA and CRM daily stock chart showing the past year of performance