U.S. equity futures contracts mostly declined as investors waited for an extraordinary day of earnings reports and a meeting of the Federal Reserve.
Futures linked to the broad S&P 500 index fell 0.8% and Dow Jones Industrial Futures fell 0.7%. Futures linked to the technology-heavy Nasdaq-100 fell 0.1%.
Investors are preparing for one of the busiest days of the quarterly earnings season, and Boeing will report before the opening clock. Earnings from tech giants Apple,
Facebook and Tesla should just after the market closes. Investors are eager to see how these companies performed during a quarter, characterized by sustained closures and stay-at-home orders.
“The benchmark for technical stocks to beat is pretty high because we were still in the lock, and yet it looks like it’s going well with higher expectations,” said Hani Redha, a portfolio manager at PineBridge Investments.
Shares of Microsoft rose 3.5% ahead of the opening bell after the company reported a record quarterly sale on Tuesday. Its shares closed at a new high on Tuesday.
Walgreens Boots Alliance rose 5.7% in pre-trade after pharmacy chain Rosalind Brewer, chief operating officer of Starbucks, named its next chief executive.
The earnings have pleased the market so far and investors are still betting on Federal Reserve Board economic support and a possible stimulus plan from the Biden government. On Tuesday, the S&P 500 reached a new intraday high before slipping into the final minutes of trading.
“The Fed and the new Biden stimulus plans – it’s all a very positive backdrop for the stock market,” said Brian Walsh Jr., a portfolio manager at Walsh & Nicholson Financial Group. “They say we are not going to let the markets fail now, and with a low yield of bonds there is nowhere else to be.”
The Fed is widely expected to leave monetary policy unchanged, and Jerome Powell, chairman, is likely to underline the bank’s commitment to supporting the economy with low interest rates and buying bonds in the foreseeable future. Mr. Powell is likely to have questions about the health of the economy and how long the Fed’s stimulus measures will last.
GameStop has risen more than 90% in pre-trading, as social media-driven day traders seem ready to stack up another day in the retailer. The stock rose 113% on Tuesday amid a battle between individual investors and hedge funds that shorted the stock. After markets closed on Tuesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted “Gamestonk !!” in an apparent reference to the insane trade.
Details of orders for durable goods will be announced at 08:30 ET. The figures are expected to show an eighth consecutive increase in orders, highlighting the resilience of manufacturing during the pandemic.
In commodity markets, Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil, rose 0.7% to $ 56.01 a barrel. Gold prices fell 0.4% to $ 1,844.30 per troy ounce.
Overseas, the pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 fell 0.5%, while stock indices in Asia were mixed. The Japanese Nikkei 225 rose 0.3%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.3%, while the Shanghai Composite rose 0.1% in mainland China.
On Tuesday, the S&P 500 reached a new intraday high before slipping into the final minutes of trading.
Photo:
Nicole Pereira / Associated Press
Write to Will Horner by [email protected]
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