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* Boeing falls after reporting $3 bln Q2 loss
* Caterpillar slips on lower quarterly earnings
* Big Tech faces broad Justice Department antitrust probe
* Futures down: Dow 0.34%, S&P 0.20%, Nasdaq 0.33%
(Adds comment, updates prices)
By Amy Caren Daniel
July 24 (Reuters) - U.S. stock market futures fell on
Wednesday after bleak earnings from bellwethers Caterpillar
CAT.N and Boeing BA.N added to the concerns over a slowing
economy that have weighed heavily on sentiment this year.
Caterpillar Inc, whose exposure to China has made it an
important measure of the global impact of trade tensions,
dropped 4.7% after it reported a fall in quarterly earnings and
cooling demand for construction machines in Asia. The world's largest planemaker BA.N matched that with a
well-flagged slump in results on the back of this year's
groundings of its best-selling 737 MAX planes after two deadly
crashes. Two weeks into the guts of an earnings season for which
investors have already dialed down expectations, the
manufacturing firms' results came on the same day as a grim set
of forward-looking surveys on the euro zone economy.
"Caterpillar's results show that there is weakness in the
Asia Pacific region, and if there is a slowdown there, where is
the next pocket of slowdown, and people could start
extrapolating from that," Andre Bakhos, managing director at New
Vines Capital LLC in Bernardsville, New Jersey
"Caterpillar's earnings are more important than Boeing,
because Boeing's issues are more company specific."
Nearly 80% of the 104 S&P 500 companies to report so far
have topped earnings expectations, and overall profits are
expected to rise about 1%, according to Refinitiv, improving
from a small decline estimated previously.
Sentiment, however, remains shaky and other corporate
newsflow, including the announcement of a broad antitrust
investigation by the U.S. Justice Department into the tech
sector, fed into the losses.
The DOJ did not identify specific companies, but the terms
of the review pointed to Alphabet Inc GOOGL.O , Amazon.com Inc
AMZN.O and Facebook Inc FB.O and shares in all three fell
about 1%.
Facebook reports its own earnings later on Wednesday and it
was also the subject of a pair of settlements announced by
regulators on privacy issues that included fines of more than $5
billion, again well-flagged previously. At 8:38 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis 1YMcv1 were down 92 points,
or 0.34%. S&P 500 e-minis EScv1 were down 6 points, or 0.2%
and Nasdaq 100 e-minis NQcv1 were down 26.5 points, or 0.33%.