A woman is carrying an umbrella as she walks past the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on February 9, 2017 in New York City.
Drew Angerer | Getty Images
Futures contracts tied to major U.S. stock indexes varied little during Wednesday night’s session as Wall Street sought to continue the S&P 500 winning streak on Thursday.
Dow futures rose 12 points, while S&P 500 contracts added less than 0.1%. Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.2%.
Expanded trade moves came after a relatively quiet day on Wall Street, which saw the S&P 500 move up 0.1% and mark a third consecutive day of gains.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 36 points, while the Nasdaq Composite fell less than 0.1% amid a fall in Amazon shares during the regular session.
Investors observed a handful of shares, including eBay, PayPal and Qualcomm, in extended transactions after each issued a quarterly earnings report.
Of the three, eBay easily outperformed with a more than 9% rise in the market after hours after overcoming the top and bottom lines and issuing a more rosy forecast than expected for the first quarter.
PayPal gained nearly 3%, while Qualcomm fell more than 7% after reporting revenue below the consensus forecast for its first fiscal quarter.
Apple rose 2% in expanded trade after CNBC reported that it is about to finalize a deal with Hyundai-Kia to produce driverless cars. The news that the two could be close to a deal comes after Hyundai said in January that it was in preliminary talks with the iPhone maker to develop a car.
The macroeconomic outlook remained focused as traders prepared for the latest iteration of the Department of Labor’s unemployment claims report, which will be released Thursday at 8:30 am ET. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expect claims for the first time to add up to 830,000 for the week ended Jan. 30.
If the claims arrived as expected, it would mean a slight reduction from the initial 847,000 claims the previous week.
Economic recovery and market performance have tracked the severity of Covid-19 in the U.S., and some strategists said vaccine deployment could lead to higher interest rates if it did not outperform cyclical or banking stocks.
“The feeling of the Covid vaccine is still very low. This will improve as investors understand that the vaccines will provide you with 1) immunity or 2) mild reaction (low severity),” the strategic strategy of the company wrote in an email on Wednesday. ‘Evercore ISI, Dennis DeBusschere.
“As investors and society at large realize that low severity is really important, the feeling of the vaccine will improve and [Treasury] yields will have another higher gap, ”he added.
The yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note rose Wednesday by about 3 basis points to 1.14%.