(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures struggled for direction at the start of another big week for corporate earnings amid concerns about a recession, while Salesforce rose on Monday as Elliott Management acquired a stake in the firm.
A slew of earnings in the coming weeks will also test the recent bounce in certain technology and growth stocks that took a large hit last year.
Concerns of a possible recession amid a high interest rate environment have hit growth-related sectors, driving major tech companies such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc to lay off thousands of employees.
Companies which make up more than half the S&P 500 index’s market value will report earnings in the next two weeks, with Microsoft, the second-largest U.S. firm by market value, posting results on Tuesday, Tesla Inc and IBM on Wednesday and Intel on Thursday.
Shares of cloud-based software firm Salesforce Inc rose 4.0% in premarket trading to lead gains among Dow components after activist investor Elliott Management Corp made a multi-billion-dollar investment in the company, according to people familiar with the matter.
At 6:17 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 5 points, or 0.01%, S&P 500 e-minis were down 3.25 points, or 0.08%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 5.75 points, or 0.05%.
Data recently has pointed to some signs of inflation cooling but has also highlighted a tight labor market, which is key for the Federal Reserve to continue its aggressive rate-hiking cycle.
Qualcomm Inc and Advanced Micro Devices Inc climbed around 2% each, after brokerage Barclays upgraded the chipmakers to “overweight” from “equal-weight”.
Payments firm PayPal Holdings Inc fell 2.1% after Germany’s cartel office regulator said it had initiated proceedings against PayPal Europe over possible hindrance against competitors.
(Reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal in Bengaluru; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi)
