US futures nudge lower on the day, eyes on big tech earnings

It’s looking like a shaky start to the day for US equities, in particular tech shares. After a modest bounce back yesterday, we’re starting to see the jitters return again today.

Despite yields surging higher overnight, it was a bit of a surprise to see Wall Street brush that aside. But with oil prices continuing to rise and yields staying underpinned, investors can only ignore that for so long perhaps.

S&P 500 futures are now down 0.4% with Nasdaq futures down 0.9% on the day. And even Dow futures are also hitting the skids, dropping by 0.3% on the day.

Things might get quite a bit bumpy for US stocks later today, not least with plenty riding on big tech earnings after the close. For today, we’ll have Alphabet and Tesla reporting in after hours. So, those are the two big tech names to watch out for. And then tomorrow, we will have Intel on the chopping block.

Besides that, IBM earnings will also be one to watch for today with shares on the verge of continuing the collapse this month. For some context here, the call today will follow up from the rare pre-announcement of its preliminary Q2 earnings on 14 July. That saw IBM report a miss on revenue and poor prioritisation of capital expenditure, which prompted CEO Arvind Krishna to candidly declare that “this quarter we faltered”.

As such, the earnings today may not be as impactful but it could pile on the misery on technical side of things with IBM shares on the cusp of breaking below its November 2024 lows and 200-week moving average.

Circling back to tech shares, today will see the kick off of big tech earnings that will run through until the end of July. After Alphabet and Tesla today, the likes of Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Amazon will all be reporting next week. So, that will make for quite a blockbuster end to the month.

As for Nvidia, they are only slated to report earnings in late August.