Stock Futures – U.S. Stock Futures Waver After Hitting Fresh Records
U.S. stock futures were little changed after major indexes hit records a day earlier and investors got ready for a slew of blue-chip earnings.
Futures tied to the S&P 500 wavered between gains and losses, indicating the benchmark gauge may open flat after notching a record high Monday. Futures for the technology-focused Nasdaq-100 index declined 0.2% and contracts tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged 0.1% higher.
This week marks the height of earnings season, with shares of
General Electric
rallying 4.9% premarket after the industrial conglomerate reported forecast-beating fourth-quarter revenue and free cash flow.
Raytheon Technologies,
and
Lockheed Martin
are also due to report earnings before the opening bell Tuesday.
Starbucks,
and
Texas Instruments
will release results after markets close. Major tech firms, including
Tesla and
Facebook,
will update investors Wednesday.
Investors will watch to see if earnings can continue to top analysts’ expectations, providing a further catalyst to push markets higher.
“What’s working in the market’s favor is the overall trend of economic growth is still robust and that’s likely to translate to positive earnings,” said Shoqat Bunglawala, head of multiasset solutions, international, at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. “There’s an expectation that there’s going to be more robust growth driven by pent up demand in the second half of the year.”
In premarket trading, shares of
rose more than 15% as individual traders, propelled by social media, piled into the stock. Shares swung wildly Monday and have gained more than 300% this year, in the latest sign that frenetic trading by retail traders is leading to outsize market swings.
Software and services firm
BlackBerry,
another favorite among individual traders, gained 17% premarket.
Etsy
rose 5.7% premarket in the minutes after Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk tweeted “I kinda love Etsy.”
The pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.8%. Shares of
UBS Group
rose 1.6% after the Swiss bank announced a new buyback program of up to $4.5 billion, having closed 2020 with a consensus-beating quarterly performance.
Travel and transportation stocks were hit hard on concerns about the speed of vaccine rollouts and the timing of some countries’ reopenings. Jet-engine maker
Rolls-Royce
was down 4.7% at its lowest level of the year.
In bond markets, the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note ticked up to 1.050% from 1.038% Monday. Yields rise when prices fall.
Indexes in Asia handed back some of the robust gains registered in the first few weeks of this year. The Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong dropped 2.6%, as heavyweight
Tencent Holdings
fell 6.3%, retreating from a record high reached in the previous session. The Shanghai Composite shed 1.5%, the Nikkei 225 retreated 1% and South Korea’s Kospi Composite lost 2.1%.
In a surprise move, the People’s Bank of China withdrew 78 billion yuan, or the equivalent of $12 billion, from the Chinese financial system through open-market operations Tuesday. The move runs counter to expectations in the run-up to the Lunar New Year holidays, when China’s banking system usually needs more, not less, liquidity.
At 10 a.m. ET, The Conference Board is due to release its index of consumer confidence, which will show whether U.S. consumers’ outlook on the economy improved or deteriorated in January.
Data showing the pace of U.S. home-price growth in November will be out at 9 a.m. In the year to October, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home price Index, which measures average home prices in major metropolitan areas, rose 8.4%.
If earnings continue to top expectations, they could provide a further catalyst to markets.
Photo:
Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Write to Caitlin Ostroff at caitlin.ostroff@wsj.com and Joanne Chiu at joanne.chiu@wsj.com
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Stock Futures – U.S. Stock Futures Waver After Hitting Fresh Records
