Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on June 18, 2024.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Stock futures inched lower Thursday after a slate of mixed quarterly results dampened investor sentiment.
S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures dipped less than 0.1% each. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures lost 65 points, or 0.2%.
Micron shares slipped more than 5% in the premarket after the chipmaker issued fourth-quarter revenue guidance in line with estimates. Levi Strauss dropped 15% after the jeans maker’s latest quarterly revenue disappointed investors.
Bank stocks were in focus after the Federal Reserve said Wednesday that the biggest U.S. firms are able to withstand a severe recession scenario. Goldman Sachs shares slid 1.6%, while JPMorgan Chase traded near the flatline.
The S&P 500 on Wednesday closed up 0.2%, while the Nasdaq Composite added 0.5%. Meanwhile, the Dow added 15.64 points, or 0.04%.
Those moves come as Wall Street awaits the latest inflation data on Friday with the release of May’s personal consumption expenditures price index. Investors hope the report will show easing pricing pressures that could cement the likelihood the Fed will lower interest rates later this year.
Even with the sluggish trading activity, megacap tech names continued to outperform on Wednesday, bouncing back from a recent slide. On Wednesday, Amazon shares reached an all-time high, breaching $2 trillion in market capitalization for the first time.
Still, investors are deliberating whether the artificial intelligence trade can continue to sustain markets in the back half of this year, or if the rally will need to broaden out. Strategists surveyed by CNBC Pro anticipate the S&P 500 will likely end the year not even 1% higher from current levels.
“Right now, we’re in this environment where the market is sort of aligned with the Fed,” Brian Levitt, global market strategist at Invesco, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Wednesday. “And what you’ll need likely is greater expectation coming into this market that the inflation story is really behind us, that the Fed can lower rates, and the soft landing happens.”
