By Peter Nurse
Investing.com - U.S. stocks are seen opening lower Friday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite underperforming after disappointing results from e-commerce giant Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) late on Thursday.
At 7 AM ET (1100 GMT), the Dow Futures contract was down 75 points, or 0.2%, S&P 500 Futures traded 25 points, or 0.6%, lower, while Nasdaq 100 Futures underperformed, dropping 150 points, or 1%.
That said, this has been a generally positive month for the major indices, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 1.6%, the broad-based S&P 500 up 2.8% and the NASDAQ Composite 1.9% higher.
This has been the busiest week for quarterly corporate earnings so far, and the deluge continued after the close on Wall Street Thursday with numbers from Amazon setting the tone.
The online retailer, one of the big winners of the pandemic, saw its extraordinary sales growth start to slow, with revenue growing only 27% in the second quarter, down from 44% in the first quarter. It fell even more to the 'mid-teens' in the period after its Prime Day marketing event.
This resulted in a number of brokerages, including JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM), Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), Piper Sandler and UBS (SIX:UBSG), cutting their price targets, a rare event in an age of almost universal enthusiasm for Internet platform stocks. The stock has fallen more than 6% premarket.
Pinterest (NYSE:PINS) stock slumped 18% premarket after the social media platform saw overall monthly active users fall short of expectations, creating concerns that the end of social distancing restrictions could see the gains made during that period disappear.
The onslaught of earnings continues Friday, with oil giant Chevron (NYSE:CVX) reporting its highest profit in six quarters and Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) reporting a sharp rise in second-quarter profit. Other results are due from the likes of Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG), Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM), Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKa) and AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV), among others.
The economic data slate Friday includes the second-quarter employment cost index, widely seen as the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, personal income and spending for June and the final July University of Michigan consumer sentiment index. Investors will be looking for signs of economic recovery after Thursday’s GDP number showed 6.5% growth in the second quarter.
Earlier Friday, the Eurozone economy expanded 2% in the second quarter of this year, exiting the recession of the previous two quarters.
Elsewhere, oil prices edged lower Friday, but are set to end the second consecutive week higher as investors remained confident about the global demand recovery.
At 7 AM ET, U.S. crude futures traded 0.3% lower at $73.39 a barrel, while the Brent contract fell 0.3% to $74.86, but both contracts are set for gains of around 2% for the week.
Additionally, gold futures fell 0.2% to $1,827.60/oz, while EUR/USD traded 0.1% higher at 1.1898.