Verdence Capital Advisors director Megan Horneman weighs in on international market strength.
U.S. equity futures are trading cautiously higher ahead of the final trading day of the week.
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On Thursday, the S&P 500 slipped less than 0.1%, declining for the third straight losing session.
Most of the stocks in the index and across Wall Street were lower, but gains for Apple, Microsoft and a few other tech heavyweights helped offset the losses.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I:DJI | DOW JONES AVERAGES | 33823.45 | -210.22 | -0.62% |
| SP500 | S&P 500 | 4221.86 | -1.84 | -0.04% |
| I:COMP | NASDAQ COMPOSITE INDEX | 14161.350236 | +121.67 | +0.87% |
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.6% to 33,823.45, while the Nasdaq composite rose 0.9%, to 14,161.35, lifted by the gains for tech and other high-growth stocks.
Investors have digested the latest message from the U.S. Federal Reserve on raising short-term interest rates by late 2023.
The Fed’s comments came Wednesday, and global markets had already initially reacted Thursday. But comments about the possibility of slowing the central bank’s bond-buying program are rippling through markets. Such support has been a key reason for the stock market’s resurgence to records.
In Europe, London’s FTSE slipped 0.4%, Germany’s DAX declined 0.3% and France’s CAC added 0.1%.
In Asia on Friday, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei lost earlier gains and inched down 0.2%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 0.9% and China’s Shanghai Composite slipped less than 0.1%.
The Bank of Japan kept its ultra-lax monetary policy intact, as investors had expected. Wrapping up a two-day meeting, the central bank also extended by six months, until March 2022, a lending program to help companies weather the pandemic.
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On Thursday, investors got a bit of disappointing economic news when the Labor Department said the number of Americans who filed for unemployment benefits last week rose slightly. The total of 412,000 workers filing for jobless benefits was worse than economists expected.
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In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude fell 20 cents to $70.88 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It fell $1.11 to $71.04 per barrel on Thursday. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 31 cents to $72.80 a barrel.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
