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Stock futures fell slightly on Sunday night as investors await a slew of corporate earnings from big tech companies, as well as fresh economic data releases.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell by 44 points, or 0.13%. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures dipped 0.17% and 0.18%, respectively.
The major indices all closed Friday on a downturn for the week as the earnings season began to ramp up, with several prominent banking names posting their quarterly results for the first time since the bank failures in March. The Dow dropped 0.23% and ended a four-week upside streak. The Nasdaq declined 0.42%, while the S&P edged down 0.1%.
While 76% of S&P 500 companies reporting earnings so far have beaten analysts’ earnings per share estimates, according to FactSet on Friday morning, markets were less optimistic as corporate profits fell. First quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to decline an overall 5.2%, according to Refinitiv data.
Wall Street is looking ahead toward mega-cap tech earnings results this week in what will mark the halfway point of earnings season. Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta are among the high-interest names scheduled to announce their results for the first quarter.
“A lot of these companies took 2022 as an opportunity to dump all the bad stuff into their earnings,” said Aswath Damodaran, professor of finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Friday, regarding upcoming tech earnings.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a lot of positive surprises coming out of their earnings reports,” Damodaran added.
Investors are also keeping a close eye out on new economic data that will provide insight into whether inflation is cooling, or if the Federal Reserve will announce another rate hike at its next meeting in early May. GDP numbers for the first quarter, as well as April’s consumer sentiment data will be released among a flurry of other economic indicators.
“Part of the reason why we’re so focused on the economic data is we think the investor narrative is still around the Fed and interest rates. And we think the economic reports over the next seven to 10 days are going to be the really big driver of ultimately what the Fed is going to do,” said Greg Bassuk, CEO of AXS Investments.
Bassuk continued, “We’re expecting the data, frankly, to be mixed. And we think that’s going to continue to cause uncertainty and continued volatility. I think, to some extent, the Fed rate hike slowed down the economy. But there’s still elements where things are still looking pretty robust. Because of that, we’re thinking that the Fed is likely to do one more rate cut.”
Coca-Cola and Credit Suisse are set to report earnings Monday before the bell. Whirlpool and First Republic Bank will be announcing their results after Monday’s trading session. Traders will also watch out for the Dallas Fed’s Manufacturing survey results to gauge the state of the state’s factory activity.
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