Stock futures were falling on Thursday, as investors tried to make sense of a mixed bag of Big Tech earnings, the latest Federal Reserve policy decision, and a meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Futures tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 104 points, or 0.2%. S&P 500 futures and contracts tied to the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 were also 0.1% lower.
The S&P 500 closed flat the previous session, and neither of the other major indexes moved by much either. The market rally appeared to be taking a pause after Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that another interest-rate cut in December was “not a foregone conclusion.” As a result, investors trimmed bets that the central bank will lower borrowing costs again at its final meeting of 2025.
Big Tech earnings from after Wednesday’s close could be another source of concern. Facebook parent Meta Platforms missed Wall Street’s profit expectations after taking a one-time charge over the third quarter, while the social-media company’s operating margin slipped as its artificial-intelligence costs mounted. Microsoft flagged that demand is still outpacing the capacity of its Azure cloud unit. Google owner Alphabet was the lone bright spot, as both earnings and revenue topped analysts’ estimates.
Elsewhere, the long-awaited meeting between Trump and Xi appeared to go pretty much as expected. Trump said after the summit ended that the U.S. would cut tariffs on Chinese goods, as part of a broader framework to ease trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies. U.S. trade representative Jamison Greer also said that Beijing had agreed to ease its curbs on rare-earth exports. China’s commerce ministry said in a follow-up statement that it would suspend its “implementation of relevant export control measures” for a year.
Quarterly earnings are likely to be the big story for the market again on Thursday, with online retailer Amazon and iPhone maker Apple both set to report after the close.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note climbed 1 basis point to 4.08% on Thursday. The dollar slid 0.1% against a weighted basket of its peers, and gold dropped 0.7% to $3,975 an ounce.