Expects contracts tied to the major U.S. stock indexes held steady during the overnight session Wednesday evening as investors parsed through a slew of corporate earnings during an otherwise positive week.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell 13 themes, implying a slight opening loss when regular trading resumes on Thursday. S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures were hardly changed and up a hair, respectively.
Wall Street’s attention in after-hours trading Wednesday evening was focused on earnings spots from several U.S. companies, but especially Microsoft and carmaker Tesla.
Despite better-than-expected figures, software giant Microsoft helpings fell as much as 3% in after-hours trading. Though the company’s results were largely positive, Microsoft indicated its transactional license purchasing continued to slow and that subsidiary LinkedIn was negatively impacted by the weak job market.
Tesla, interval, blew past analyst expectations and posted its fourth consecutive quarter of profit, opening the door for the company’s involvement in the S&P 500. Excluding one-time charges, Tesla’s second-quarter earnings per share of $2.18 were well above the 3 cents per deal expected by analysts polled by Refinitiv.
Elon Musk’s automaker also said it’s set “for a successful second half” and iterated its goal of delivering 500,000 vehicles this year.
The after-hours moves followed a positive regular session on Wednesday, with the crucial indexes all posting modest gains on both vaccine and federal stimulus announcements.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the day up 165.44 levels, or 0.6%, with McDonald’s and Microsoft contributing the most to the index. The S&P 500 also rose about 0.6% as utilities and official estate investment trusts led the broader market higher. The Nasdaq Composite, meanwhile, rose 0.2%.
The three indexes are up 1.25%, 1.59% and 1.9%, mutatis mutandis, for the week.
Equities caught a morning bid after the U.S. agreed to pay drugmaker Pfizer and German partner BioNTech nearly $2 billion for 100 million coronavirus vaccines if their office-seeker proves both safe and effective.
U.S. stocks also rallied toward the end of the regular session on Wednesday after sources commanded CNBC that congressional Republicans are weighing an extension of watered-down federal unemployment benefits through the end of the year.
On Thursday, the Labor Hang on will release its latest report on weekly jobless claims. The weekly figures provide Wall Street with deprecatory insight on how many Americans continue to collect unemployment benefits, known as continuing claims.
Another 1.3 million hands are expected to have filed first-time claims for state unemployment benefits during the week ended July 18.
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