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U.S. equity futures edged lower Tuesday, with the S&P 500 on pace for its first monthly decline since September, as investors looked to another busy session of corporate earnings and jobs data and as the Federal Reserve kicks off its two-day policy meeting in Washington.
Stocks ended higher on April 30, helped in part by a modest pullback in Treasury bond yields and one of the best single session gains for Tesla (TSLA) shares in more than two years as investors eyed a series of labor-market-data reports and the Fed’s policy decision over the coming days.
The first of those, in fact, will fall this morning at 8:30 am. Eastern Time, when the Labor Department publishes its first quarter employment-cost index, a key measure of wage inflation that feeds into the Fed’s overall forecasts.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy will likely detail the e-retail and cloud-services group’s AI road map when it reports first-quarter earnings after the close of trading.
Another active slate of earnings releases, which includes Eli Lilly, 3M and McDonald’s (MCD) before the opening bell and Starbucks (SBUX) , PayPal (PYPL) and Amazon (AMZN) after the close, will also have a heavy influence on trading.
Related: Analyst unveils new Amazon price target as stock tests $2 trillion
3M (MMM) shares surged 8% after the industrial group posted stronger-than-expected first-quarter earnings of $2.39 a share and confirmed that Bill Brown will take over from Mike Roman as CEO starting May 1.
Eli Lilly (LLY) shares jumped 6.9% after the drugmaker said its Zepbound weight-loss treatment helped drive stronger-than-expected first-quarter earnings and a boost to its full-year profit forecast.
Coca-Cola (KO) shares slipped 0.2% after the drinks maker topped Wall Street forecasts on both its top and bottom lines and lifted its full-year organic-sales forecast.
McDonald’s missed Street same-store sales forecasts, although revenues topped estimates at $6.17 billion, sending shares 1.1% lower.
Collective first-quarter S&P 500 profits are forecast to rise 5.6% from a year earlier to $435.3 billion, according to LSEG data, with profits over the three months ending in June rising 10.4% to $447.4 billion.
Heading into the start of the trading day on Wall Street, futures contracts tied to the S&P 500, which is down 2.63% for the month, are priced for a 5 point opening-bell decline.
Contracts tied to Dow Jones Industrial Average, meanwhile, are priced for a 30 point pullback while the Nasdaq is called 25 points lower.
Benchmark 10-year note yields were last seen trading at 4.634%, with 2-year notes pegged at 4.979%. The figures come ahead of the Fed’s two-day policy meeting in Washington, although traders aren’t expecting any change in base lending rates from the Fed statement on May 1.
In Europe, the core rate of prices eased to 2.7% in April, while headline HICP held at 2.4%. Those softer inflation data stiffened bets on a rate cut from the European Central Bank in June.
More Wall Street Analysts:
Analyst unveils new Nike price target ahead of big summer for sportsAnalysts weigh in on Google-parent Alphabet’s stock after cloud eventAnalysts revamp Disney stock price target after proxy fight
The region’s Stoxx 600 index, however, was marked 0.26% lower in Frankfurt and on pace for a monthly decline of around 0.3%. Britain’s FTSE 100, meanwhile, rose 0.58% in London and looks set to book an impressive April gain of 3.3%.
Overnight in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 returned from its Monday holiday to book a 1.24% gain on the session. The yen held at 156.94 against the U.S. dollar amid renewed speculation of intervention from the country’s finance ministry.
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