(Reuters) – U.S. index futures were muted on Thursday, a day after a crushing selloff in megacap tech stocks steered the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to their biggest drop since 2022, with investors also bracing for a bevy of earnings and economic data.
At 5:06 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 108 points, or 0.27%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 4.5 points, or 0.08%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 6.25 points, or 0.03%.
Lackluster earnings from Alphabet and Tesla soured investor sentiment towards megacaps on Wednesday, knocking down the high-momentum ‘Magnificent Seven’ group of tech stocks. All three major Wall Street indexes slid between 1.2% and 3.6% on the day to end at multi-week lows.
The trend in the megacaps was largely mixed in Thursday’s premarket trading. Apple, Nvidia, Tesla and Alphabet were down 0.5%-0.9%, while Amazon.com and Meta Platforms rose over 0.1% each.
The heavyweight stocks have powered the stock market to all-time highs this year and Wednesday’s selloff, following the first round of quarterly tech earnings, highlighted concerns that these stocks might be over-stretched and in for more turbulence.
Futures tracking the Russell 2000 climbed 0.3% after the small-cap index slumped over 2% in Wednesday’s broad-based market decline, even as investors now see more value in shifting to lagging sectors.
With the rest of the highly monitored tech stocks not reporting until next week, the focus now shifts to a slew of economic data during the day — durable goods, second-quarter GDP and weekly jobless claims.
The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index data, due on Friday, will be a crucial test for ongoing bets of an early start to Federal Reserve rate cuts after the recent trend of easing inflation and some weakness in the labor market.
Market participants are also pricing in around three rate cuts this year. Bets of a 25-basis-points cut in September fell to 78.5% from 90% the previous day, as per CME’s FedWatch Tool.
Among individual stocks, Ford slumped 13% after its second-quarter adjusted profit missed estimates by a wide margin as the automaker continues to battle costly quality issues and an EV business that is weighing on its bottom line.
IBM climbed 4.1% after beating second-quarter revenue estimates and raising its annual growth forecast for its software business.
KLA rose 3% after forecasting revenue and profit for its fiscal first quarter above expectations, while Edwards Lifesciences slumped 22% after missing second-quarter revenue estimates.
Chipotle Mexican Grill rose 4% after surpassing estimates for quarterly results.
(Reporting by Ankika Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza)
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