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Stock market futures fell early Friday as a soft earnings report from Amazon threatened to dampen an otherwise strong month ahead of July’s final day of trading.
Contracts tied to the Nasdaq 100 futures fell 1%, while those tied to the S&P 500 shed 0.6% and Dow futures were down 100 points.
Amazon sank 6.4% in premarket trading after it reported its first quarterly revenue miss in three years and gave weaker guidance. The move in Amazon’s stock helped weigh on Nasdaq 100 futures. Pinterest fell even further, down 21%, after saying it lost monthly users during the three months ended June 30.
Procter & Gamble shares rose slightly after the consumer giant topped analysts’ estimates for quarterly earnings and revenue. However, the company warned that increasing commodity costs could hit its earnings in the upcoming year.
Shares of online brokerage Robinhood started trading on the Nasdaq at $38 per share on Thursday, but the stock eventually closed its debut session more than 8% lower $34.82 per share. Robinhood shed another 1.5% in premarket trading.
Equities rallied during Thursday’s regular session even after the Commerce Department said economic growth in the U.S. decelerated somewhat in the second quarter.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained about 150 points on Thursday after reaching a new intraday high. The S&P 500, which also briefly touched an all-time high, finished the day up 0.4% at 4,419.15.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite underperformed with a 0.1% gain, kept in check by a 4% drop in Facebook shares after the social media company’s earnings report.
Those gains added to an otherwise healthy month for the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq. The tech-weighted Nasdaq Composite and Dow have added 1.89% and 1.69% respectively in July, while the broad S&P 500 is up 2.83% over the same period. Utilities, health-care, real estate and technology stocks have led the S&P 500 higher for the month, while energy and financials have lagged.
Thursday’s positive session came despite a government report that showed U.S. second-quarter gross domestic product accelerated 6.5% on an annualized basis, considerably less than the 8.4% Dow Jones estimate.
The GDP update wasn’t the only economic news Wall Street pored over this week. Many investors were relieved that the Federal Reserve signaled no imminent plans for dialing back asset purchases.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday noted that while the economy has come a long way since the Covid-19 recession, it still has a ways to go before the central bank considers adjusting its easy-money policies.
“While shy of expectations specifically for Q2 GDP, broadly speaking as Chairman Powell noted yesterday, the recovery has in many ways exceeded even the most optimistic forecasts,” Stifel Chief Economist Lindsey Piegza wrote Thursday afternoon. “With U.S. businesses reopen for business and American consumers anxious to rush into the marketplace and spend, growth in the first half of the year was solid.”
The Fed will receive the latest iteration of its preferred inflation gauge, the personal consumption expenditures price index, Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET.
