A trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., July 30, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures rose on Wednesday evening following solid earnings reports from tech giants Microsoft and Meta Platforms.
S&P 500 futures jumped 0.7%, and Nasdaq 100 futures climbed 1%. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 89 points, or 0.2%.
“Magnificent Seven” titans Microsoft and Meta respectively rose about 8% and 11% in extended trading on the back of better-than-expected quarterly earnings. Software giant Microsoft said that annual revenue from its cloud computing service Azure exceeded $75 billion. Meta issued an upbeat third-quarter sales outlook, surpassing the Street’s estimates.
On Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump also announced that the U.S. had reached a trade deal with South Korea, setting tariffs at 15%. That’s lower than the 25% rate Trump had threatened in a letter to Seoul earlier this month. The announcement arrives just ahead of Friday’s big tariff deadline.
In regular trading Wednesday, the S&P 500 closed lower after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled that the U.S. central bank is still not ready to cut interest rates. The broad market index shed 0.12%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 171.71 points, or 0.38%. The Nasdaq Composite, on the other hand, notched a 0.15% gain.
While the Federal Reserve left its benchmark overnight policy rate steady at its July meeting, not all members agreed with the decision. Fed governors Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller dissented with the call to keep the key interest rate at a range of 4.25% to 4.50%. When asked about a potential policy change in September, Powell said that the Fed has “made no decisions.”
Ross Mayfield, investment analyst at Baird, said that Wednesday’s losses made sense given the market’s currently “stretched” valuations. The S&P 500’s decline marked its second day of losses following a streak of six record closes in a row.
“There’s a lot of good news priced in, so I think little things on the margin can have a bigger impact when you’ve had such a run, like slightly hawkish comments in the FOMC presser,” Mayfield said to CNBC. “Sentiment has shifted back to a pretty bullish tenor, and I think the market needs to consolidate and take a breather, and it’ll grab on to whatever it needs to as an excuse.”
On Thursday, traders will watch out for June’s personal consumption expenditures price index reading, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge. Economists polled by Dow Jones see headline PCE rising 2.5% on a 12-month basis and 0.3% from the prior month. Weekly jobless claims are also due.
Comcast, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cigna, CVS Health, Shake Shack, AbbVie and Mastercard are among the companies set to report earnings before Thursday’s opening bell. Results from Apple and Amazon are on deck for the afternoon.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC.