By Peter Nurse
Investing.com -- U.S. stocks are seen opening lower Monday at the start of a week that includes preliminary data on first quarter growth as well as earnings reports from a number of tech titans.
At 7 AM ET (1100 GMT), the Dow futures contract was down 280 points, or 0.8%, S&P 500 futures traded 40 points, or 0.9%, lower and Nasdaq 100 futures dropped 120 points, or 0.9%.
The three main Wall Street indices have seen selling over the last month as investors adjusted for the Federal Reserve’s hawkish pivot, with Chairman Jerome Powell last week largely cementing a 50-basis-point rate hike at the central bank’s next meeting in early May.
The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average closed Friday almost 1000 points, or 2.8%, lower, its worst day since October 2020, resulting in its fourth consecutive losing week. The broad-based S&P 500 fell 2.8% on Friday and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.6%.
The U.S. is scheduled to release preliminary first-quarter growth figures later this week against a background of concerns over whether the Fed can engineer a soft landing for the economy as it tries to curb soaring inflation.
The GDP number, released on Thursday, is expected to slow sharply to 1.1% from 6.9% in the final quarter of 2021.
Almost 180 companies listed on the S&P 500 are due to report results in the coming week, including the four largest U.S. companies by market capitalization: Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL).
First quarter expectations are muted, with the disappointing Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) subscriber numbers exacerbating concerns about earnings in the tech sector.
Soft drinks giant Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) heads up the earnings slate Monday, but the likes of Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI), Otis (NYSE:OTIS) and Whirlpool (NYSE:WHR) are also scheduled to report.
Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) will also be in the spotlight following reports that the social media platform’s board has started discussions with Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk about a possible sale. If confirmed, that would represent an abrupt change of mind given the company was very quick to turn down Musk’s $43 billion bid last week.
Oil prices slumped to near two-week lows Monday on increased concerns that the spreading COVID outbreak in China, the world’s largest importer of crude, will stunt demand.
By 7 AM ET, U.S. crude futures traded 4.5% lower at $97.4 a barrel, while the Brent contract fell 4.4% to $101.52. Both benchmarks dropped around 5% last week, and have now fallen to levels last seen on April 12.
Additionally, gold futures fell 1.2% to $1,911.20/oz, while EUR/USD traded 0.6% lower at 1.0727.