Wall Street futures gained ground on Thursday as several more strong results from the US technology sector boosted sentiment ahead of the latest set of US gross domestic product figures.
Contracts tracking Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 rose 0.6 per cent, while those tracking the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 were up 0.9 per cent ahead of the New York open.
The moves come as earnings at some of the world’s largest technology companies have held up, even though US interest rates have continued to climb. After solid results from Alphabet and Microsoft, Facebook parent Meta reported strong sales growth in the US, pushing shares up 11 per cent in pre-market trading.
The social media group expects revenue for the next quarter between $29.5bn and $32bn, above expectations. But Peter Garnry, head of equity strategy at Saxo Bank, said Meta’s further investment in developing the metaverse was the “one disappointing aspect of the earnings release”.
US investors are also looking ahead to first-quarter GDP figures, which are expected to come in at 2 per cent, down from 2.6 per cent in the final three months of 2022. Separate data is set to point to a rise in unemployment. Analysts at Goldman Sachs said there was a 35 per cent chance the US would enter a recession over the next year.
Fears of a recession have recently begun to weigh on stocks. The S&P 500 is down 1.3 per cent over the past month, having rallied in March even as three midsized banks failed. “I think we’re looking at downside for a while,” said Mike Zigmont, head of trading at Harvest Volatility Management.
“I don’t know [by] how much. It’s not necessarily because the market is bad or the world is bad etc, it’s simply because the optimism from mid-March came out of nowhere and wasn’t vindicated by news or events. It was a speculative rally where the speculation was off,” he said.
US government bonds steadied, with the yield on interest rate-sensitive two-year Treasuries rising 0.02 percentage points to 3.95 per cent. Yields move inversely to prices.
First Republic shares slid for a third day on Wednesday, shedding almost 30 per cent after regulators and big banks held back from stepping in to help the San Francisco-based lender. Its shares plummeted this week after the bank revealed customers withdrew $100bn of deposits during March’s banking turmoil.
European stocks were steady on Thursday as investors waded through a host of first-quarter corporate earnings. The region-wide Stoxx 600 added less than 0.1 per cent, the FTSE 100 was flat and France’s Cac 40 index rose 0.4 per cent.
Shares of consumer goods giant Unilever rose 1.5 per cent after it reported record first-quarter revenue of €14.8bn, while shares in Deutsche Bank rose 1.6 per cent after the German lender said profit hit its highest in a decade in the first quarter.
Asian stocks rose, with China’s CSI 300 index up 0.7 per cent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index gaining 0.4 per cent.
