LDN - Business

Nasdaq futures jump as investors cheer Microsoft results

[April 26, 2023] By Sruthi Shankar and Ankika Biswas

(Reuters) - Nasdaq futures rose on Wednesday buoyed by upbeat earnings from technology major Microsoft, though S&P 500 and Dow contracts came under pressure from worries about the impact of rising interest rates on the U.S. economy.

Microsoft Corp climbed 7.3% in premarket trading after it beat estimates for quarterly results, and said that artificial intelligence products were stimulating sales.

Tracking the strong performance in Microsoft's cloud segment, firms including Amazon.com, data analytics company Datadog, and data cloud giant Snowflake Inc advanced between 2.9% and 7.1%.

"Despite some better-than-expected results from the first of the big tech crowd to report, the darkening picture of consumer confidence has increased concerns about lower spending ahead," said Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets, Hargreaves Lansdown.

Wall Street's major averages suffered their deepest declines so far this month on Tuesday as a downbeat UPS forecast exacerbated investor concerns about a slowing U.S. economy while plunging deposits at First Republic Bank added to jitters about the bank sector's health.

Denting sentiment, Activision Blizzard fell 12% after UK's competition regulator prevented its takeover by Microsoft on antitrust concerns.

Of the 124 S&P 500 companies that reported first-quarter profit through Tuesday, 79% topped analysts' expectations, as per Refinitiv IBES data. In a typical quarter, 66% companies beat estimates.

Earnings forecasts have also improved, with analysts expecting a 3.9% contraction in first-quarter profit for S&P 500 companies compared with a 5.2% decline estimated at the beginning of the earnings season.

Meta Platforms Inc is scheduled to report after market close on Wednesday.

At 7:20 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 25 points, or 0.07%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 2.25 points, or 0.05%, while Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 103.5 points, or 0.81%.

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Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., April 14, 2023. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

Durable goods data for March is scheduled for release at 8:30 a.m. ET. A key inflation metric as well as U.S. GDP data for the first quarter will be out later in the week.

Data on Tuesday showed U.S. consumer confidence dropped to a nine-month low in April, signaling that the economy could fall into recession this year.

Investors are keenly awaiting the Federal Reserve's monetary policy decision on May 3 for clues on how far policymakers will hike interest rates.

Traders have given about 77% odds to the U.S. central bank hiking rates by 25 basis points next week, as per CMEGroup's Fedwatch tool, with most expecting the Fed to hold rates before starting to cut them later this year.

Reflecting mounting anxiety among investors, the cost of insuring exposure to U.S. sovereign debt rose to its highest since 2011, driven up by unease that the government could hit its debt ceiling sooner than expected.

The U.S. House of Representatives could as early as Wednesday vote on a bill to sharply cut spending for a decade in exchange for a short-term hike in the debt ceiling, though it was unclear if it had enough support in the Republican majority to pass.

Among other stocks, Visa Inc inched up 0.9% on reporting better-than-expected second-quarter profit and betting on sustained growth at its payments business, while PacWest Bancorp rallied 14.2% as the regional lender beat estimates for first-quarter profit as it managed to stabilize deposit outflows.

(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar and Ankika Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Vinay DwivediS)

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