Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 19, 2024.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
S&P 500 futures rose on Tuesday night, as traders prepared for additional reports from major tech companies and looked ahead to a key reading on the economy’s growth.
Futures tied to the broad market index added 0.2%, while Nasdaq 100 futures inched up by nearly 0.3%. Dow futures gained 61 points, or 0.1%.
Alphabet kicked off a major week for megacap tech earnings. The Google parent exceeded analysts’ expectations as the company saw strong quarterly revenue growth from its cloud business, leading shares up more than 5.5% after market close.
Also in tech, Snap and Reddit shares jumped 10% and 24%, respectively, on strong quarterly results. Chipmaker AMD slid 8% as its fourth-quarter revenue guidance failed to impress investors, despite posting strong growth in its data center unit.
Tech titans Meta Platforms and Microsoft are set to report on Wednesday, while Apple and Amazon are due Thursday.
On the economic front, investors are anticipating the first preliminary reading of the gross domestic product out on Wednesday. The report is expected to show that GDP grew at a 3.1% annualized pace in the third quarter, according to the Dow Jones consensus forecast. That would be just 0.1 percentage point above the previous period if accurate, and would be the 10th straight quarter of expansion. It’s also expected to show inflation moving closer to or coming out below the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target.
In anticipation of the Big Tech earnings releases, investors drove the Nasdaq Composite to a fresh record during Tuesday’s trading session. The Nasdaq advanced 0.78%, while the S&P 500 added 0.16%. The 30-stock Dow underperformed, shedding 0.36%.
“Growth-oriented stocks, like the NASDAQ 100, returned to leadership,” on Tuesday, Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Asset Management, said. “We are closely monitoring tech earnings releases to ensure businesses investment in artificial intelligence and other productivity enhancing tools remains robust to support strong future earnings growth.”
Haworth added that he is closely watching the quarterly GDP report to understand the health of the consumer, which appears resilient.
