Aug 5 (Reuters) – Contracts tracking the S&P 500 and the Dow edged up on Wednesday on hopes of a Middle East peace breakthrough, while Nasdaq futures lagged as upbeat forecasts from SpaceX and AMD failed to impress investors.
Elon Musk-led SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled and operating losses narrowed in its first earnings report since going public, fueled by its booming Starlink satellite communications and AI businesses.
But the rocket company’s shares slid 10% in premarket trading after executives flagged the spending spree underpinning its lofty ambitions were far from over. Shares could face additional pressure from the expiry of the stock’s post-IPO lock-up period starting on Thursday. Musk’s other company, Tesla, slipped 0.8%.
Advanced Micro Devices forecast quarterly revenue above estimates, reflecting strong AI demand. However, shares slipped 8.1%, suggesting investors were looking for a stronger outlook to justify the stock’s 142% jump this year.
Rival Nvidia’s shares, which have lagged AMD this year, rose 1.9%, also underpinned by SpaceX’s plans to use the company’s hardware exclusively to build its data centers.
Other chip stocks such as Intel and Micron lost 1.5% each, while megacaps Microsoft and Alphabet were steady as Wall Street took a breather from a rally spanning over the past few sessions that took the benchmark S&P 500 and the blue-chip Dow to record highs.
At 05:06 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were up 116 points, or 0.21%, and S&P 500 E-minis were up 19.75 points, or 0.25%. Nasdaq 100 E-minis were down 20.5 points, or 0.07%.
The focus is also on a private national employment survey due at 8:15 a.m. ET that could offer clues on how the jobs market fared in July, ahead of the official non-farm payrolls figures on Friday.
A survey on services sector activity during the previous month is also due at 10 a.m. ET.
Data has broadly reflected robust economic performance, but with Middle East tensions keeping energy costs elevated and the Federal Reserve offering no forecasts on monetary policy, uncertainty persists.
Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmid, a non-voting member on the Federal Open Market Committee, said late on Tuesday that some sort of monetary policy tightening is needed to get “too high” inflation back to the 2% target.
Remarks from Governor Lisa Cook and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly will be scrutinized for their perspectives on interest rates.
Traders are pricing in a 58.4% chance of a rate hike in September, the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool showed.
Telecom stocks such as Verizon and AT&T shed over 2% each and T-Mobile slipped 0.8% after SpaceX revealed ambitions to build full-fledged mobile service.
Results from Uber, Eli Lilly, Honeywell and Kraft Heinz are among those due before markets open.
(Reporting by Johann M Cherian in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
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