Stock futures fall as U.S. government shutdown looms, but Wall Street heads for monthly gains: Live updates

Sean Conlon, Pia Singh

Updated Tue, Sep 30 20258:31 AM EDT

Specialist traders work inside a booth on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 10, 2025.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Stock futures fell Tuesday as a potential U.S. government shutdown loomed. Despite the latest declines, Wall Street was headed for an unusually strong September.

Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 127 points, or 0.3%. S&P futures slipped 0.2% along with Nasdaq-100 futures.

Although shutdowns aren’t usually market-moving events, this time could be different as investors are already wary about a slowing labor market, the risk of stagflation and elevated stock valuations. A shutdown could also prompt rating agencies to rethink the condition of U.S. credit, which was downgraded in May by Moody’s.

After a meeting between President Donald Trump and top Democrats and Republicans, Vice President JD Vance said Monday evening: “I think we’re headed to a shutdown because the Democrats won’t do the right thing.”

The Labor Department also announced Monday that the September nonfarm payrolls report scheduled to release Friday will not come out if the U.S. government suspends operations. The report is one of several upcoming key data releases that will provide crucial information about the direction of the economy ahead of the Federal Reserve’s upcoming October policy meeting. Exacerbating concerns over the shutdown was President Donald Trump’s threat over the weekend that a shutdown could result in mass firings of federal workers.

Jack Janasiewicz, lead portfolio strategist and portfolio manager at Natixis Investment Managers, said that a government shutdown could lead to some “tangential effects” in near-term market sentiment and volatility.

“With investors keenly aware of the risks to a softening labor market and simultaneously laser focused on the signs of tariff pass-through to inflation, any delay in the collection of economic data resulting from the shutdown could lead to increased uncertainty. And with that increased uncertainty we often see a pick-up in financial market volatility,” Janasiewicz said.

“Could such uncertainty be large enough to dent the economic backdrop and along with it risk assets? Probably not a lasting impact but the longer the uncertainty drags out, the greater the risk,” he said.

Echoing that view, Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge anticipates that the shutdown would weigh on market sentiment if it were to last longer than a considerable amount of time, a situation that could delay important economic data releases. Government shutdowns don’t often last beyond two weeks.

“When it comes to Washington, the market widely expected a shutdown to happen, so investors are largely sitting tight for now, but if this extends beyond two weeks, people will start to become more concerned,” the firm’s founder said.

A strong September

Major U.S. stock indexes continue to hover near record highs ahead of the final September session. The S&P 500, which has averaged a 4.2% drop for the month over the last five years, has increased more than 3% this month.

Additionally, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained 1.7%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite has outperformed the other two benchmark indexes with a roughly 5.3% gain in September.

Tuesday will also bring the end of the third quarter. The broad-based index is up 7.4% quarter to date, while the Nasdaq is set to notch a nearly 11% quarterly gain. The Dow is up 1.7% over the three-month period, which would mark its fifth positive quarter in a row.

Stocks making premarket moves

Here are some of the names moving before the opening bell:

• Firefly Aerospace — Shares of the space technology company tumbled 10% after one of its rocket boosters exploded during preflight testing at its Texas facility. No other facilities were affected, Firefly Aerospace said.
• Wolfspeed — The semiconductor components maker’s stock soared 23%, one day after rocketing almost 1,700%. Wolfspeed said Monday it successfully completed a financial restructuring and emerged from Chapter 11 protection.
• Instacart — The grocery delivery company shed 2.6% following a downgrade at BTIG to neutral from buy. The investment bank cited stepped-up competition for the call.

To see more stocks moving in the premarket, read the full story here.

— Michelle Fox

Lutnick pushes for Taiwan to help the U.S. produce 50% of its chips

The Trump administration is pushing Taipei to shift investment and chip production to the U.S. so that half of America’s chips are manufactured domestically, in a move that could have implications for Taiwan’s national defense. 

Washington has held discussions with Taipei about the “50-50” split in semiconductor production, which would significantly reduce American dependence on Taiwan, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick told News Nation in an interview released over the weekend. 

Taiwan is said to produce over 90% of the world’s advanced semiconductors, which, according to Lutnick, is cause for concern due to the island nation’s distance from the U.S. and proximity to China. 

“My objective, and this administration’s objective, is to get chip manufacturing significantly onshored — we need to make our own chips,” Lutnick said. “The idea that I pitched [Taiwan] was, let’s get to 50-50. We’re producing half, and you’re producing half.” 

Read more.

— Dylan Butts

EchoStar rallies on report of wireless spectrum sale to Verizon

EchoStar soared 9% after Bloomberg News reported, citing sources, that the telecom company was in talks to sell some of its wireless spectrum to Verizon. The talks, according to the report, involve EchoStar’s AWS-3 licenses, which are used for 5G wireless.

Verizon shares were flat in the premarket.

Where the major averages stand for the month and quarter

A small replica of the Charging Bull statue is seen on a street vendor stall outside the New York Stock Exchange on July 11, 2025.

Jeenah Moon | Reuters

Wall Street is set to wrap up a strong month and quarter, driven by gains in AI giants such as Nvidia and Oracle. Here’s where the major U.S. stock benchmarks stand:

• Dow: up 1.7% in September; up 5% in Q3
• S&P 500: up 3.1% month to date; up 7.4% for the quarter
• Nasdaq Composite: up 5.3% in September; up 10.9% in third quarter

BMO’s Brian Belski expects S&P 500 to continue posting gains next year

Chief investment strategist Brian Belski.

Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Tightening interest rates and strong earnings growth should keep powering the U.S. stock market higher, according to BMO Capital Markets chief investment strategist Brian Belski.

Belski, who late last week raised his year-end S&P 500 forecast to his bull case of 7,000, said on Monday that “2025 has set the table for ‘Goldilocks’ for 2026 and 2027.”

Belski said earnings growth could be between 8% and 10% next year.

“What’s wrong with stocks going up? It’s actually a really, really good thing, number one,” Belski said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.” “We also have this notion of a lot of cash on the sidelines. We have a fourth quarter that, traditionally, when you see a market that’s up 15% to 20% the first nine months of the year, the average return is like 5.6% going back to 1950 or so. So seasonality is involved. But also the believability of equities are back in terms of it working, and the believability of the U.S. market is to have some wherewithal is also back.”

Belski said that inflation concerns could arise if the Federal Reserve ultimately cranks interest rates down too fast, but believes that stocks can still manage a so-called ‘goldilocks’ scenario with high single-digit returns next year.

— Pia Singh

Vail Resorts, Firefly Aerospace among stocks making the biggest moves in after-hours trading

A screen displays the Firefly Aerospace logo during the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, U.S., August 7, 2025.

Jeenah Moon | Reuters

A handful of companies were moving after Monday’s close. Take a look at the names below:

• Shares of Vail Resorts dropped 2% in after-hours trading. The ski resorts operator posted a quarterly loss of $5.08 per share, while analysts polled by LSEG expected a loss of $4.73 per share. The company’s revenue of $271 million also missed analysts’ consensus expectations of $274 million.
• Firefly Aerospace shares dropped about 12% after one of its rocket boosters exploded at its Texas facility during preflight testing. The company said it was assessing the impact of the incident on its booster test stand and “no other facilities were impacted.”
• Shares of the maker of AI-powered infrastructure software rose 3% after it exceeded Wall Street’s estimates for its third quarter and raised its full-year guidance. Progress Software earned $1.50 per share, after adjustments, on revenue of $250 million. Analysts surveyed by LSEG expected earnings of $1.30 per share and $240 million in revenue.
• Jefferies Financial Group shares dropped about 1.3% even though the company beat on top and bottom lines, reporting revenue that jumped roughly 22% from a year earlier while its investment banking advisory business hit a record. Jefferies earned $1.01 per share on revenue of $2.05 billion, while analysts polled by LSEG expected 80 cents per share in profits on $1.92 billion in revenue. “Based on our dialogue and our backlog, we believe that private-equity activity is strengthening,” Jefferies President Brian Friedman told the Wall Street Journal.

— Pia Singh

U.S. stock futures open little changed

Shortly after 6 p.m. ET on Monday, futures tied to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures each dipped less than 0.1%. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged lower by 18 points, or less than 0.1%.

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