Equity futures are flat as Wall Street focuses on tense debt ceiling negotiations

European stocks lacked direction Monday morning as investors awaited the latest news on US debt ceiling talks, with the Stoxx 600 rising 0.07% at 8:12 a.m. London time.

Mining, oil and gas and banking stocks suffered the biggest losses, all of which fell about 0.5%.

Household goods and health care were more upbeat, rising 0.5%.

The German DAX is down 0.12% from Friday’s all-time high, while the French CAC is down 0.08%. The UK FTSE 100 rose 0.25%.

Core machine orders in Japan fell 3.9% month-on-month in March, more than expected.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected the stock to rise 0.7% month on month.

Compared to last year, machine orders also fell by 3.5%, while pressure was expected to increase by 1.4%.

Japanese machine orders rose 9.8% year-on-year in February.

– Jihe Lee

The China Cyberspace Administration has banned operators of China’s “critical information infrastructure” from buying products from US memory maker Micron.

This comes as a file That China’s cyberspace administration reports that Micron products had failed a network security assessment, citing “potentially serious network security vulnerabilities”.

This, she added, “presents a significant security risk to the supply chain of critical information infrastructure in China and has implications [its] National security.”

The Cyberspace administration did not specify which products would be banned or what security vulnerabilities Micron products had when they were released.

Shares of Micron’s South Korean rivals rose Monday morning after the announcement, with SK Hynix up 1.54% and Samsung Electronics up 0.5%.

— Lim Hwi Ji

de Volksbank of China Benchmark lending rates remained unchanged for the ninth consecutive month.

China left its one-year loan prime rate unchanged at 3.65% and its five-year loan prime rate unchanged at 4.30%, in line with expectations from economists polled by Reuters.

The Chinese domestic yuan fell 0.2% to 7.0205 against the US dollar.

– Jihe Lee

Bank of America strategist Savita Subramanian raised her year-end target for the S&P 500 from 4,000 to 4,300 on Sunday night.

The new target is more than 2% above where the index closed on Friday. Subramanian said in a note that the big companies’ recent focus on efficiency should help make earnings more stable going forward.

Watch the CNBC Pro for more on this call and other Wall Street forecasts.

— Jesse Pond

Federal leaders are expected to continue negotiations on the US debt ceiling on Monday as the country approaches bankruptcy.

President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., will meet in person at the White House.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Sunday that “hard choices” will have to be made about which notes will not be repaid if the debt ceiling is not raised, reiterating her warning that the US could default as early as June 1.

— Jesse Pond, Ashley Cabot

Equity futures were lower Sunday night, with Dow futures down about 0.2% and S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures down about 0.3%.

— Jesse Pond