Wall Street to open softer after stellar week

The main Wall Street indices are expected to open on a little lower on Friday as investors paused for breath after a stellar week for earnings from Big Tech.

Futures are pointing to a softer start, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq all expected to shed a few points at open as they simmer down from Thursday’s mania.

It’s been a tech-focused week in New York, with Amazon Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) ending the release flurry with a blockbuster set of quarterly numbers as a boom in online shopping during lockdowns across the world sent profits surging.

Net income more than trebled to US$8.1bn in the three months to 31 March compared with US$2.5bn a year ago, while net sales jumped 44% to US$108.5bn.

Twitter, instead, saw its shares drop after second-quarter forecasts fell short of expectations, after guiding down on its monetizable daily active user average growth rate.

Friday will see the release of the latest personal spending and income numbers for March, “which are expected to see a skew as a result of the second round of stimulus payments”, according to Michael Hewson at CMC Markets.

“Given we already know that retail sales numbers for March were very good, it’s not too much of a stretch to see similar strong numbers here. In February we saw personal income decline -7.1% after a 10% rise in January,” he said.

“The March stimulus payments are expected to see personal income rise by 20%, however regarding spending the estimates appear to be much more conservative, with an expectation of a 4.2% rise, after a February decline of -1%.”

Four things to watch for on Friday:

• The earnings diary for the end of the week will see results from oil majors ExxonMobil Corp (NYSE:XOM) and Chevron Corp (NYSE:CVX), biopharma firm AbbVie Inc (NYSE:ABBV) and household products group Colgate-Palmolive Co (NYSE:CL)
• Shares in bleach maker Clorox Co (NYSE:CLX) will be in focus after the company reported sales that missed estimates alongside a swing to a loss
• Similarly, microblogging platform Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) will be on interest after its quarterly earnings beat expectations but user numbers fell short of forecasts
• On the macro front, investors will be paying attention to US income data for March as well as the latest Chicago PMI and Michigan consumer sentiment information

Story by ProactiveInvestors