By Bansari Mayur Kamdar
(Reuters) – U.S. stock futures rose on Thursday on a string of strong earnings led by American Airlines and insurer Travelers, a day after the tech-heavy Nasdaq plunged into correction territory.
Investors will also be watching jobless claims data at 0830 ET for cues on the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting next week after data earlier this month showed U.S. consumer prices reached the highest in four decades.
Bets of a more hawkish Fed have weighed on Wall Street this month, with the Nasdaq confirming it was in a correction on Wednesday as investors continued to dump technology stocks.
Recovering somewhat from the selloff, megacap growth companies including Microsoft Corp, Alphabet Inc, Amazon, Tesla Inc, Meta Platforms Inc rose 1.6% in premarket trading.
Several heavyweight growth stocks have underperformed the Nasdaq since its last record close on Nov. 19, with Amazon, Tesla and Nvidia down 15%, 12% and 24%, respectively.
Netflix, the streaming service pioneer that is set to kick off earnings season for big growth companies later in the day, advanced 1%.
Wall Street is watching Netflix’s results to see whether companies have started to pull in enough new customers to justify big spending on online programming in 2022.
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is also set to decide on whether the full Senate should vote on two bills aimed at reining in tech giants. The bills would bar tech platforms like Amazon from giving preference to their own businesses on their websites and big app stores like Apple from requiring app providers to use their payment system.
At 7:09 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 157 points, or 0.45%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 22.5 points, or 0.5%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 122.5 points, or 0.81%
American Airlines gained 1.4% after reporting a smaller fourth-quarter loss, boosted by strong travel demand during the holiday season.
Peer United Airlines declined 1.2% after cutting its capacity forecast for 2022 on Wednesday and warning of higher costs due to Omicron coronavirus variant.
Bellwether insurer Travelers Companies gained 3.3% after reporting a record quarterly profit as higher returns from its investments cushioned the hit from a rise in catastrophe-related claims.
U.S. railroad operator Union Pacific Corp and trust bank Northern Trust Corp will also be reporting results later in the day for the final quarter of 2022.
(Reporting by Bansari Mayur Kamdar in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni)
