U.S. stock futures wavered Friday ahead of quarterly earnings and a jobs report that will give insights into the pace of business activity and the economic rebound.
Futures tied to the S&P 500 ticked down less than 0.1%, putting the broad stocks gauge on course for a muted weekly advance. Contracts for the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.1%. Futures for the technology-focused Nasdaq-100 fell 0.2%.
Stocks have waffled near record highs this week. Investors are weighing a strong set of quarterly results among the biggest U.S. companies against the prospect that rising coronavirus cases could put the brakes on consumer spending. Many are also wary of risks stemming from China’s regulatory assault on technology companies and the potential for higher interest rates if inflation remains elevated.
The market “is sort of grinding higher very slowly,” said
Trevor Greetham,
a fund manager at Royal London Asset Management. “It feels quite fragile to me: It feels like the stock market could get knocked, at least temporarily, by bad Delta variant news. But it would be a dip that would bounce back.”
At the same time, Mr. Greetham said now isn’t the time to be underweight stocks—or own less than the share included in benchmark indexes—because earnings are still surging.
Ahead of the opening bell in New York, shares of
American International Group
rose over 2%. The insurance firm said late Thursday it swung to a second-quarter profit, aided by gains in its private-equity investments.
Beyond Meat’s
stock dropped almost 5% in premarket trading after the maker of non-meat products reported a wider quarterly loss.
Expedia Group
fell 6.5% after the travel company posted a second-quarter loss.
Newspaper publisher Gannett,
Norwegian Cruise Line
and
Dominion Energy
are among the companies due to publish earnings before the opening bell. Through Thursday, 86% of the 446 companies on the S&P 500 to have reported quarterly results had beaten analysts’ expectations.
Investors will parse the Labor Department’s monthly data on hiring, employment and wages, due to be published at 8:30 a.m. ET, for clues about the state of the economy. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal estimate that 845,000 jobs were created last month, similar to June’s total, and that the unemployment rate fell to 5.7%.
The yield on 10-year Treasury notes rose to 1.245% from 1.217% Thursday. Yields move in the opposite direction to bond prices and are on course to snap five consecutive weeks of declines.
It looks increasingly likely that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in early 2023, said Jason Borbora-Sheen, a portfolio manager at Ninety One, pointing to comments by Fed Vice Chairman
Richard Clarida
earlier this week. “That should become an increasing focus for the market and possibly a destabilizing force,” Mr. Borbora-Sheen said.
Overseas, the Stoxx Europe 600 ticked down 0.2%, led lower by shares of retailers and construction and materials companies.
Among individual equities,
London Stock Exchange Group
gained 3.8% after the stock-exchange and financial-information company said pretax profits nearly doubled in the first half of 2021.
Shares of grill maker Weber had their first day of trading on Thursday.
Photo:
Richard B. Levine/Zuma Press
In Asia, China’s Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.2% by the close of trading and Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.3%.
China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite was lower 0.2%.
Write to Joe Wallace at Joe.Wallace@wsj.com
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