New York, NY – U.S. stock futures faced a downward trend on Friday as investors assessed a wave of corporate earnings in anticipation of a crucial inflation report. Wall Street was on track for a negative week after a strong month for stocks.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average futures saw a decline of 37 points, marking a 0.10% decrease. Additionally, S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures experienced drops of 0.20% and 0.31%, respectively.
The market absorbed the latest earnings reports from various companies. Dell Technologies witnessed a 16% drop despite beating first-quarter expectations. Conversely, cloud security firm Zscaler saw a surge of 14%, while developer data platform MongoDB faced a 23% decline. Retailer Gap experienced a 21% increase, while Nordstrom slid over 6%.
In the previous trading session, major benchmarks experienced losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed over 300 points lower, a 0.9% drop, following Salesforce missing revenue expectations. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite also saw declines of 0.6% and 1.1%, respectively.
Investors expressed concern over the market’s choppiness and questioned whether the recent rally in stocks was losing momentum. Some speculations pointed at the dominance of large-cap tech stocks like Nvidia masking weaknesses in the broader market. While the S&P 500 recorded a 10% increase this year, the equal-weighted index only showed a 3% rise.
Analysts are closely watching the April personal consumption expenditure data set to release on Friday morning, with expectations of a 2.7% year-over-year increase for core PCE. Economic indicators suggest a slight decrease from the previous 2.8% gain.
For the month, stocks are on track to conclude positively, with major benchmarks set to record a sixth positive month out of seven. The Dow rose by 0.8%, the S&P 500 by 4%, and the Nasdaq Composite by about 7% this month, marking its best performance since November 2023.