© Reuters
Investing.com -- U.S. stocks are seen opening higher Thursday, with positive earnings from Meta Platforms helping soothe concerns about tightening monetary policy and a slowing economic outlook.
At 06:50 ET (10:50 GMT), the Dow Futures contract was up 190 points, or 0.6%, S&P 500 Futures traded 20 points, or 0.5%, higher and Nasdaq 100 Futures climbed 100 points, or 0.8%.
Facebook-parent Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) posted growth in advertising sales in the first quarter, after the close Wednesday, for the first time in almost a year, following a strong performance by Reels, the tech giant's answer to the craze for TikTok-like short-form videos.
This resulted in Meta’s stock soaring over 10% premarket, and is likely to result in the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite outperforming when the market opens.
The Nasdaq Composite had been the only index to close in the black Wednesday, gaining 0.5% after Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) shares had jumped more than 7% after the software giant posted an earnings beat.
The blue chip Dow Jones Industrial Average closed over 200 points, or 0.7%, lower and the broad-based S&P 500 dropped 0.4% on concerns surrounding a slowing economy as well as the health of the banking sector.
The earnings season continues apace Thursday, with online retail giant Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) reporting its first-quarter results after the close of U.S. trading.
Investors will be particularly keen to see just how deep a recent downturn in sales growth has been at the company’s key cloud-computing division, Amazon Web Services.
Results are due from the drug companies Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) and Merck (NYSE:MRK), the carriers Southwest Airlines (NYSE:LUV) and American Airlines (NASDAQ:AAL), as well as credit card giant Mastercard (NYSE:MA) and media giant Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA).
The day’s main U.S. economic release is the first quarter GDP number, which is expected to show that growth slowed to 2.0% annually in the first quarter, down from 2.6% in the prior three-month period.
The Federal Reserve is widely tipped to increase rates by another 25 basis points next week, but a weak GDP number would increase expectations that the officials will agree to at least a pause in the tightening cycle.
Oil prices stabilized Thursday, with a much larger-than-expected drop in weekly U.S. crude inventories helping to balance out concerns slowing economic growth will hit future oil demand.
U.S. crude stocks fell by 5.1 million barrels last week, following a 4.6M barrel draw in the prior week and below the expected 1.5M barrel decrease, according to data from the Energy Information Administration, released Wednesday.
By 06:50 ET, U.S. crude futures traded 0.1% higher at $74.38 a barrel, while the Brent contract climbed 0.1% to $77.83.
Both benchmarks are still on course to post losses of around 4% this week, having erased the vast majority of the gains made on the back of a surprise production cut by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies at the start of this month.
Additionally, gold futures rose 0.7% to $2,009.85/oz, while EUR/USD traded flat at 1.1040.
