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Sentiment remained fragile with the first-quarter earnings season set to pick up this week, especially with reports from Wall Street’s biggest tech stocks due through the week.
A rout in the sector- triggered by a decline in chipmaking stocks- drove steep losses in Wall Street indexes over the past two weeks. But this also made the sector open to some bargain buying.
S&P 500 Futures rose 0.3% to 5,107.75 points, while Nasdaq 100 Futures rose 0.4% to 17,254.50 points by 19:19 ET (23:19 GMT). Dow Jones Futures rose 0.2% to 38,295.0 points.
Focus now turns to upcoming quarterly earnings from some of Wall Street’s biggest tech titans, due later in the week.
Four of the so-called Magnificent Seven stocks are set to report earnings this week, with Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) on Tuesday, Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) on Wednesday, followed by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Google owner Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) on Thursday.
The tech sector was nursing steep losses over the past week, especially as middling earnings from chipmaking bellwethers ASML (AS:ASML) Holding (NASDAQ:ASML) and TSMC (NYSE:TSM) spurred concerns that artificial intelligence will only provide a limited boost to the sector.
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) in particular was the worst-hit among its peers, plummeting 10% on Friday to a near two-monht low.
This spurred a decline in U.S. stock benchmarks. The S&P 500 fell 0.9% on Friday to 4,967.23 points, while the NASDAQ Composite slid 2.1% to 15,282.01 points. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.6% to 37,986.40 points, buoyed by buying in non-tech sectors such as financials, discretionaries and industrial stocks. American Express (NYSE:AXP) was a top boost to the Dow on strong first-quarter earnings.
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq slid 3.5% and 6.1%, respectively, over the past week. The Dow was flat.
Markets were also awaiting a string of readings this week for more cues on the U.S. economy, especially amid waning expectations for a June rate cut by the Federal Reserve.
Purchasing managers index data for April is due later in the week, and will provide more cues on U.S. business activity.
More closely watched will be PCE price index data- the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge- which is due later in the week. The reading is also expected to show that inflation remained sticky in March.
