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Futures contracts tied to the major U.S. stock indexes slipped early Friday as investors pored over a flurry of earnings results and a robust profit beat from e-commerce giant Amazon.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrials dumped 145 points, or 0.4%, to 33,804.
Futures for the S&P 500 slid 21.25 points, or 0.5%, to 4,182.50.
Futures for the NASDAQ Composite index lost 90 points, or 0.6%, to 13,863.50.
So far this week, the S&P 500 is up 0.8%, the Dow is up less than 0.1% and the NASDAQ is up 0.5%.
Amazon, the last of Wall Street’s mega-cap tech companies to publish results, reported a record first-quarter profit. The Seattle-based firm said profits more than tripled to $8.1 billion and January-to-March sales soared 44% to $108 billion.
The results blew past Wall Street expectations with the company earning $15.79 per share vs. the consensus estimate of $9.54.
Amazon’s results showed demand remained strong for its massive online retail business even as the economy started to open up some. The blowout results also showed big gains in high-growth cloud-computing and advertising businesses.
Shares rose 2% in pre-market trading, but that was not enough to lift sentiment for the whole market.
Twitter, meanwhile, moved in the opposite direction on user growth results and second-quarter revenue guidance that fell short of analysts’ forecasts.
The social media platform said monetizable daily active users totaled 199 million during the three months ended March 31 and reported per-share earnings of 16 cents. Twitter plunged 12% in pre-market trading.
Apple was coming under some slight pressure in the pre-market after the European Union said the company’s App Store was breaching its competition rules. The shares were down 0.7% in pre-market trading.
Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and Colgate-Palmolive are reporting earnings on Friday before the bell. Chevron shares fell after quarterly EPS failed to exceed expectations. Colgate-Palmolive rose 1.5% in pre-market trading after beating on the top and bottom lines of its quarterly results.
Twitter and Amazon’s equity performance should influence the S&P 500 during the week’s final day of trading. The index closed at record levels on Thursday on the heels of blowout earnings results from Apple and Facebook.
Wall Street will also keep a close eye on personal income and spending data, set for release at 8:30 a.m. ET Friday morning. That data could provide investors, and the Federal Reserve, with a valuable look at how quickly prices are rising across the U.S. economy as it recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Overseas, in Japan, the Nikkei 225 returned from holiday to lose 0.8%, while in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index plummeted 2%.
Oil prices dropped $1.29 to $63.72 U.S. a barrel.
Gold prices moved up 80 cents to $1,769.10 U.S.
