Futures are lower and the dollar is surging

Futures are lower and the dollar is surging after the long weekend.

Near 9:07 a.m. ET, Dow futures were down 47 points, S&P 500 futures were down 7 points, and Nasdaq futures were down 17 points.

The US dollar is making the big move in markets today. The dollar index jumped by as much as 1% on Tuesday morning to as high as 97.30.

The dollar rallied to the highest in nearly eight years against the Japanese yen - as high as 123.

The euro tanked to a one-month bottom, to as low as $1.0885.

Market watchers pointed to Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen's comments on Friday that it would be appropriate to raise interest rates at some point this year.

In company news, Charter Communications is buying Time Warner Cable for over $55 billion, it was announced this morning, following reports by Bloomberg over the long weekend that the agreement was near.

The agreement values each Time Warner share at $195.71 - 14% more than the closing price on Friday. The new deal values Time Warner at $78.7 billion.

Time Warner Cable shares jumped as much as 7% in pre-market trading.

There's plenty of economic data out Tuesday. We first got a snapshot of business spending which showed nondefense capital goods orders excluding aircraft jumped by 1.0%. Economists had expected an increase of just 0.3%.

Total durable good orders including volatile aircraft orders fell 0.5%, in line with expectations.

Home prices rose more than expected in March, according to the latest S&P/Case-Shiller home price index. Prices rose 0.95% month-over-month (versus 0.9% expected,) and rose 5.04% year-over-year (versus 4.6% expected.)

At 10:00, more housing numbers will cross with new home sales data.

Markit US Services PMI and the Dallas Fed's Manufacturing Index are due at 9:45 and 10:00 respectively.

Here's a look at the dollar index.