U.S. stock ‍index futures fell on Monday, as a violent selloff in precious metals unsettled investors at the start ​of a week packed with corporate earnings and major economic data.

Gold dropped as much as 6% and silver tumbled 10%, as commodity ⁠exchange CME Group boosted margin requirements for the precious metals following a historic plunge on Friday. The rout rippled across markets as ⁠leveraged investors ‌were forced to unwind positions to meet margin calls.

U.S.-listings of gold and silver miners dropped in premarket trading. Newmont down 2.2%, while Barrick Mining and Kinross Gold dropped 2.8% and 3.2%, respectively.

Hecla Mining and ⁠Coeur Mining slipped over 2.7% each.

The metals selloff deepened last week after U.S. President Donald Trump nominated Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve chair to replace Jerome Powell in May, a move that investors largely viewed as hawkish.

Shares of energy companies dropped as oil prices fell 5%, after Trump said Iran was "seriously talking" with Washington, signalling de-escalation ⁠and easing supply disruption concerns. Exxon Mobil and ​Chevron fell over 1.5% each.

At 05:29 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were down 117 points, or 0.24%, S&P 500 E-minis were down 41 points, or ‍0.59% and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were down 222 points, or 0.86%.

The volatility VIX index climbed to 19.11, hovering near a two-week high after last week's ​choppy stretch triggered by mixed mega-cap earnings and heightened policy uncertainty stemming from Trump's pick of Warsh.

Tech mega-caps slipped in premarket trading, with Nvidia and Tesla down nearly 2% each, while Meta and Alphabet lost 1.4% and 0.9%, respectively.

Microsoft and Amazon lost over 0.8% each.

Investors face another heavy week of tech earnings, with 128 of S&P 500 companies expected to report results, including Alphabet, Amazon and AMD.

Market reaction to last week's tech results underscored the narrowing tolerance for costly capital-spending plans unless companies can show accelerating growth.

Microsoft shares notched their worst week since March 2020 on Friday, after cloud revenue disappointed, heightening scrutiny over whether the industry's multi-billion dollar artificial-intelligence investments will begin to generate meaningful returns.

Oracle dropped 3.7% after the company said it expects to raise $45 ⁠billion to $50 billion in debt and equity this year.

The U.S. entered what ‌is expected to be a brief shutdown on Saturday after Congress failed to approve a deal to keep a wide swath of operations funded.

Economic data this week will provide several checkpoints on the health of the U.S. economy.

January manufacturing PMI ‌data is due ⁠later on Monday, followed by S&P Global's composite PMI on Wednesday. Labor-market indicators take center stage later in the week with JOLTS, jobless ⁠claims and Friday's nonfarm payrolls report.

(Reporting by Pranav Kashyap in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)