Stock Market Today: S&P 500 Futures Pause Near Record Highs as Oil Rises Ahead of Bank Earnings

Oil surging past $100 is lifting energy stocks while high bond yields drag on tech, and underneath a deceptively calm index, a quiet rotation is reshaping portfolios before bank earnings reveal whether the slowdown is finally catching up to borrowers.

S&P 500 futures are basically flat before the open. The index’s futures sit near 7,817, up 0.1%, after a record-setting week. Oil is the main mover this morning. Brent crude is trading near $106 a barrel because the war with Iran is still disrupting global energy supplies, and that is raising oil stocks before the bell. Investors are holding the S&P 500 steady ahead of Tuesday, when bank earnings season begins.

Brent settled Friday at $105, and it keeps rising. In May, the EIA expected Brent to average $89 in the fourth quarter. Prices are still well above that forecast, so producers are making more per barrel than planners expected.

Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM | XOM Price Prediction) is up 1.2% in premarket trading. Chevron (NYSE:CVX) is up about the same, and both stocks have gained close to 45% this year. In midstream, Energy Transfer (NYSE:ET) agreed last week to buy Vaquero Midstream. The deal adds to a pipeline network that already carries natural gas to power plants serving AI data centers.

On Friday the 10-year Treasury yield rose to 5.2%. It recently reached its highest level since 2002. The Fed also raised its target rate in September, which sets the upper bound at 4%. Higher rates make future profits worth less today, and fast-growing tech stocks feel that the most.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) is down 0.4% before the open. That small dip matters because NVIDIA makes up 8% of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:SPY), which is barely moving near $779.

The flat index hides money moving underneath it. Energy is gaining while the largest tech holding falls, so the two cancel out in the headline number. Owning an S&P 500 index fund means most of your results still depend on a handful of AI giants, and increasingly on the power, cooling, and pipeline companies feeding them (we highlighted seven of those suppliers in a free AI infrastructure report). Oil exposure is cushioning those holdings right now, but it can’t fully replace them.

The VIX, Wall Street’s fear gauge, is around 15, which counts as a normal reading. Options traders are calm even though bond yields are at multi-decade highs and oil is above $100.

Four of the largest U.S. banks report before the open on October 13, along with two major health care companies. Watch the money banks set aside for bad loans. The economy added only 29,000 jobs in September, so rising reserves would show the hiring slowdown is starting to hit borrowers.

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After two decades of patrolling the dark corners of suburbia as a police officer, Rich Duprey hung up his badge and gun to begin writing full time about stocks and investing. For the past 20 years, he’s been cruising the markets looking for companies to lock up as long-term holdings in a portfolio while writing extensively on the broad sectors of consumer goods, technology, and industrials. Because his experience isn’t from the typical financial analyst track, Rich is able to break down complex topics into understandable and useful action points for the average investor. His writings have appeared on The Motley Fool, InvestorPlace, Yahoo! Finance, Money Morning, and, of course, 24/7 Wall St. He has been featured in both U.S. and international publications, including MarketWatch, Financial Times, Forbes, Fast Company, and USA Today.

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