Futures edge lower as earnings roll in, chipmakers retreat

[January 24, 2023]  (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures edged lower on Tuesday as corporate reports from bellwethers including 3M, Johnson & Johnson and GE pushed earnings season into high gear, while semiconductor shares pulled back from a bounce in the previous session.

In a week packed with high-profile earnings reports and key economic data, investors will now look to assess the impact of the Federal Reserve's rate-hiking spree. The central bank is widely expected to raise rates by another quarter of a percentage point next week.

Industrial conglomerate 3M Co fell 2.5%, leading the decliners among Dow components in premarket trading, after reporting a fall in quarterly profit.

General Electric Co slipped 2.6% as it forecast a lower-than-expected 2023 adjusted profit.

Johnson & Johnson, however, rose 2.2% after the healthcare giant beat estimates for fourth-quarter profit.

Wall Street's main indexes started the earnings-heavy week on solid ground amid renewed appetite for growth stocks following a battering last year.

After logging its biggest gain in over two months on Monday, Advanced Micro Devices Inc slipped 2.5% as brokerage Bernstein downgraded the chipmaker to "market-perform" from "outperform" citing a bleak outlook for the PC market.

Other chipmakers including Nvidia Corp, Intel Corp and Broadcom Inc fell between 0.4% and 1%.

Traders work at the post where Carvana Co. is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., December 7, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Analysts now see fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies dropping 3% year-on-year, nearly twice as much as the 1.6% annual drop seen at the beginning of the year, per Refinitiv data.

At 6:58 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 65 points, or 0.19%, S&P 500 e-minis were down 9 points, or 0.22%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 49.5 points, or 0.41%.

Other major growth stocks also dipped, with Alphabet Inc falling 1.1%. The U.S. Justice Department is poised to sue Google as soon as Tuesday, according to a report, regarding its dominance over the digital advertising market.

Microsoft Corp is scheduled to report quarterly earnings after the bell. Shares of the company inched 0.1% lower.

Zions Bancorporation slid 2.7% after Chief Executive Harris Simmons warned that the lender continued to build loan loss reserves on recession worries.

Data from S&P Global later in the day will likely show flash manufacturing PMI fell to 46.0 in January from a final reading of 46.2 in December, while flash services PMI rose to 45 this month from 44.7 in December.

(Reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal and Johann M Cherian in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

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