By Peter Nurse
Investing.com - U.S. stocks are seen opening lower Friday, weighed by disappointing earnings results from tech giants Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), ahead of key inflation data.
At 6:40 AM ET (1040 GMT), the Dow Futures contract was down 62 points, or 0.2%, S&P 500 Futures traded 25 points, or 0.5%, lower, while Nasdaq 100 Futures dropped 149 points, or 0.9%.
The major indices all closed sharply higher on Wall Street Thursday, with the broad-based S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ending at record highs.
All three averages are on course to post winning weeks, while the S&P 500 is up 6.7% in October, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained 5.6% and the Nasdaq has rallied 6.9%.
Solid earnings have been behind these strong gains, but the tone turned negative after the close Thursday when weaker than expected quarterly numbers from both Apple and Amazon raised fears about the impact of global supply chain issues on future earnings.
Apple stock slumped 3.5% in premarket trading after Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook warned of a $6 billion hit in the upcoming holiday quarter. Amazon stock dropped nearly 5% after the e-commerce giant commented on higher costs in order to attract workers, severely eating into profits in its most important quarter of the year.
The earnings deluge continues Friday, with big oil in the spotlight. Chevron (NYSE:CVX) and Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) are due to report third quarter numbers, and should offer up strong revenue gains given the elevated crude prices.
The main economic release Friday is the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, the core personal consumption expenditures price index, which excludes food and energy costs. This is due at 8:30 AM ET (1230 GMT), and is expected to have risen 0.2% month-on-month in September, slightly slower than August’s 0.3%.
Crude prices edged higher Friday, but were on course for their first weekly drop in months as a near two-month rally prompted by record high gas prices in Europe and China peters out.
Attention now turns to next Thursday’s meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies including Russia, a group called OPEC+. These top producers are expected to stick to their plan to add 400,000 barrels a day of supply each month until April 2022.
By 6:20 AM ET, U.S. crude futures traded largely flat at $82.81 a barrel, while the Brent contract rose 0.1% to $83.70. Both benchmarks were on track to fall about 1% for the week - the first weekly drop in 10 weeks for WTI and the first in eight weeks for Brent.
Additionally, gold futures fell 0.3% to $1,796.40/oz, while EUR/USD traded 0.2% lower at 1.1654.