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Traders on the floor of the NYSE, Oct. 12, 2023.
Source: NYSE
Stock futures were slightly lower early Friday as traders braced for major bank earnings.
S&P 500 futures were down 0.1%, as Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell marginally. Nasdaq-100 futures nudged 0.3% lower.
JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and BlackRock are set to kick off third-quarter earnings for major financial firms on Friday. Investors haven’t been able to hide their feelings of trepidation as higher capital requirements and a looming recession threaten to squeeze earnings for the financials sector.
Besides fears over disappointing earnings and another potential rate hike, investors have also turned their concerns to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which could potentially threaten global oil supply and prices. But Nancy Tengler, chief investment officer at Laffer Tengler Investments, believes that investors might be losing sleep for little reason.
“We’ll have some companies that will disappoint but I think for the most part, earnings are probably going to surprise investors to the upside,” she said in an interview with CNBC. “Investors are too pessimistic. We expect that companies are going to be able to manage this pretty well.”
Tengler added she thinks stocks will end the year with a rally, led by the technology and industrials sectors.
On Friday, traders will also be watching for preliminary consumer sentiment data for October.
All three major indexes ended the Thursday’s session in the red, with the Dow dropping more than 173 points. The S&P 500 slid 0.6% along with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite. The major averages also snapped four-day winning streaks.
Even though the three major averages ended Thursday with losses, they are each on pace for weekly gains. The S&P 500 is up 0.9%, while the Dow is up nearly 0.7% on the week. The Nasdaq Composite is the outperformer of the three, up 1% through Thursday’s close.
This would be the third positive week in a row for the Nasdaq, and the second straight positive week for the S&P 500. The Dow is also set to snap a string of three straight weekly declines.
Thursday’s losses came after the latest consumer price index report revealed that inflation still stubbornly persists, pushing bond yields higher. CPI rose 0.4% in September, and gained 3.7% from 12 months earlier.
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