Wall Street pointed mostly higher in premarket trading Thursday while more corporate earnings poured in a day after the Federal Reserve opted to leave its benchmark lending rate alone.
Futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.3% before the bell Thursday, while futures for the technology-heavy Nasdaq climbed 0.5%. Dow Jones Industrial futures ticked down 0.1%.
Major U.S. airline stocks fell after an American Airlines plane collided with an Army helicopter and fell into the Potomac River just outside of Washington late Wednesday night.
The commercial jet was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members as it was attempting to land at Ronald Reagan National Airport. There were multiple fatalities and a large search-and-rescue operation was underway in the Potomac. Three soldiers were onboard the helicopter, an Army official said.
Shares of American were down 3.8%. Southwest Airlines shares declined 2%, even after the carrier reported fourth-quarter earnings that topped Wall Street expectations.
Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, rose 1.6% after posting sharply higher profit and revenue for its fourth quarter. The company credited higher ad revenue on its social media properties for the strong results reported Wednesday after the bell. Meta forecast increasing expenses on its artificial intelligence efforts.
Tesla jumped 3.2% after CEO Elon Musk told analysts on a conference call that the company was on track to offer unsupervised “full self-driving” technology to its customers as a paid service starting in Austin in June. The electric car maker's fourth-quarter sales and profit fell short of Wall Street projections.
On the losing side was Microsoft, which fell 4% after it fell short of projections for its closely-watched cloud computing business, a centerpiece of its AI efforts.
United Parcel Service slumped 13.5% after the package delivery company beat analyst profit projections but fell short on sales. Investors were disappointed in the company's guidance for 2025, which was lower than expected due to sagging demand.
Investors remain uncertain over the outlook for the U.S. economy and over what’s ahead from the administration of President Donald Trump.
The Fed’s latest decision could hint at rates staying on hold for a while following their swift drop at the end of 2024. Lower rates would help the economy by making it cheaper for U.S. households and companies to borrow, but the downside is they could also fuel more inflation.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. central bank could cut rates if inflation slows further or if the job market suddenly weakens. But “right now, we don’t see that, and we see things as in a really good place for policy and for the economy, and so we feel like we don’t need to be in a hurry to make any adjustments."
In Europe at midday, France's CAC 40 gained 0.6%, while Germany's DAX edged up 0.3%. Britain's FTSE 100 added 0.5%.
Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 rose 0.3% to finish at 39,513.97. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.6% to 8,493.70.
SoftBank Group's stock dipped 1.1% after reports it was in talks to invest in OpenAI, while Nissan Motor's shares finished 1.4% higher after the Japanese automaker confirmed plans to reduce production in the U.S.
Some Asia-Pacific markets remained closed for the Lunar New Year holiday.
Benchmark U.S. crude gained 10 cents to $72.72 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, also rose by a dime, to $75.71 a barrel.
The U.S. dollar cost 154.16 Japanese yen, down from 155.24 yen. The euro inched down to $1.0405 from $1.0423.
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