Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., March 29, 2023.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
U.S. stock futures were little changed on Thursday night.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures inched lower by 19 points, or 0.06%. S&P 500 futures fell just 0.01%, while Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.05%.
The Dow fell about 110 points, or 0.33%, during regular trading Thursday. The S&P 500 dropped 0.6%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost 0.8%. Tesla shares weighed on the Nasdaq, tumbling nearly 10% the day after the company posted first-quarter net income that declined sharply from the year-ago quarter.
The major averages are on pace to end the week in the red, with the Dow and the S&P 500 on track for their worst weekly performances since March.
There is much more macro-level uncertainty surrounding this earnings season than in the recent past, according to Matt Stucky, senior portfolio manager at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management.
“The concept of rolling recessions is something that I think is going to be uniquely appropriate to describe what we’re likely to see over the next 12 to 24 months. And so, industries like semiconductors have kind of been going through a recession in the last six to 12 months,” Stucky said, adding that there are other areas that have yet to see any weakness at all.
“So it’s kind of case by case, which is why at the individual stock and industry level, we’re seeing outsized moves that maybe a lot of investors might miss if they’re looking [at just the] top level moves of the S&P 500 or the Dow,” he added.
Earnings season continues Friday, with Procter & Gamble, Regions Financial, SLB, Freeport-McMoRan and HCA Healthcare set to report earnings before the bell. Investors will also be looking at the Purchasing Managers’ Index for the manufacturing and services sectors to get insight into the economy.
