US stock futures stalled on Thursday as Wall Street eyed the US-China trade truce struck by Presidents Trump and Xi, cooling odds of another interest-rate cut, and the next tranche of Big Tech earnings.
Dow Jones Industrial Average (YM=F) slipped 0.2%. Contracts on the broad benchmark S&P 500 (ES=F) and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) wavered around the flat line.
Stocks have lost steam after Fed Chair Jerome Powell stressed that a December rate cut is “not a foregone conclusion — far from it.” His comments, which came after the central bank lowered its benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point, highlight division among policymakers.
The Trump-Xi meeting overnight failed to provide a boost, even as it delivered effectively a 1-year trade truce. The US will halve fentanyl-related tariffs on China in return for a 12-month pause in Beijing’s curbs on rare earth supplies, while China has pledged to start buying American soybeans again.
Meanwhile, investors braced for quarterly results from tech megacaps Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) after the bell, following earnings reports from their “Magnificent Seven” counterparts Alphabet (GOOG), Meta (META), and Microsoft (MSFT) late Wednesday.
Alphabet shares jumped over 7% after the Google parent reported stronger-than-expected quarterly results. But Meta sank almost 8% and Microsoft slipped nearly 3% as investors parsed the companies’ outlooks.
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