By Bansari Mayur Kamdar and Shreyashi Sanyal
(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures edged lower on Friday as big lenders including JPMorgan and Wells Fargo kicked off the fourth-quarter earnings season with a mixed batch of results, while big technology companies extended declines after a bruising selloff.
JPMorgan Chase & Co tumbled 3.0% in premarket trading on reporting weaker performance at its trading arm, even as it beat earnings expectations for the fourth quarter.
Wells Fargo & Co, on the other hand, gained 1.8% after posting a greater-than-expected rise in fourth-quarter profit.
Asset manager BlackRock Inc posted a fourth-quarter profit above estimates. However, its shares fell 0.1%.
Year-over-year earnings growth from S&P 500 companies was expected to be lower in the fourth quarter compared with the first three quarters but still strong at 22.4%, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
The S&P 500 financial sector is up nearly 6% since the start of this year, outperforming the S&P 500, amid expectations of banks benefiting from interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve and firming Treasury yields.
The financial sector has also benefited from a shift to economically sensitive sectors from growth sectors such as technology and consumer discretionary.
Megacap growth companies including Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft, Tesla and Meta fell up to 0.6% a day after a selloff triggered by multiple Fed speakers who put talks about inflation and interest rate hikes in focus.
At 7:11 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 49 points, or 0.14%, S&P 500 e-minis were down 8 points, or 0.17%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 44.25 points, or 0.29%.
U.S. casino operators Las Vegas Sands, MGM Resorts, Wynn Resorts and Melco Resorts advanced between 3.5% and 10.3% after Macau’s government capped the number of new casino operators allowed to operate to six with an operating period of up to 10 years.
Investors will be eyeing retail sales data later in the day, with analysts expecting it to remain unchanged in December after a 0.3% increase in November.
(Reporting by Bansari Mayur Kamdar and Shreyashi Sanyal in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
