(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures fell on Thursday as Treasury yields climbed to fresh 16-year highs, taking the sheen off stocks in premarket trading, while Tesla dropped and Netflix surged after their quarterly earnings.
Tesla slid 4.7% as the electric vehicle maker missed Wall Street expectations on third-quarter gross margin, profit and revenue.
CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday that he was concerned about the impact of high interest rates on car buyers, adding the EV maker was hesitating on its plans for a factory in Mexico as it gauges the economic outlook.
“Tesla cut prices earlier this year to stimulate demand, but it might need to go further if it wants to get more of its vehicles on the road,” said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.
“Intense competition in the electric vehicle industry and a more cautious consumer have made Tesla’s life much harder.”
Netflix soared 13.3% after the streaming giant said it was raising prices for some of its plans in the United States, Britain and France after adding 9 million subscribers in third quarter.
All eyes will be on the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who will take the podium in New York at 12 p.m. ET with his colleagues at the U.S. central bank in apparent agreement to hold interest rates unchanged at their next meeting in two weeks.
Markets will also be awaiting comments from other Fed officials including Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee and Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker, among others, to gauge the central bank’s interest rate path.
Initial jobless claims for the week ended Oct. 14, Philly Fed Business Index and existing home sales data for September will be in focus during the day.
Yields on the benchmark Treasury notes spiked on Thursday, with the 2-year yield that best reflects interest rate expectations climbing to a 17-year high at 5.2442% as recent economic data cemented fears of higher-for-longer rates.
Fed policymakers , on Wednesday, signaled a pause in hiking interest rates for another couple months as they wait for signs of progress on taming high inflation and the potential for the recent rise in longer-term borrowing costs to do some of their work for them.
Wall Street ended sharply lower in the previous session, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq falling more than 1% each as yields rose and investors assessed the latest batch of earnings.
At 4:33 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 85 points, or 0.25%, S&P 500 e-minis were down 11.75 points, or 0.27%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 27.75 points, or 0.18%.
Among other stocks, Lam Research fell 3.6% after the chip manufacturing equipment supplier forecast second-quarter revenue slightly below Wall Street estimates due to weak memory chip demand, even though its China business continues to boom.
(Reporting by Shubham Batra in Bengaluru; Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil)
