Investing.com - Wall Street futures pointed to a slightly higher open on Thursday, as investors continued to weigh the barrage of earnings and looked forward to data on weekly jobless claims, along with appearances by two members of the Federal Reserve (Fed).
The blue-chip Dow futures gained 28 points, or 0.06%, by 7:04AM ET (12:04GMT), the S&P 500 futures rose 4 points, or 0.17%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures inched up 4 points, or 0.07%.
As of Wednesday, 327 of the S&P 500 companies had reported earnings with 69% topping earnings-per-share estimates on average growth of 7.0%, while 52% beat consensus sales forecast on growth of 4.7%, according to earnings trend analysis firm The Earnings Scout (ES).
However, these experts warned that despite these seemingly positive stats, the percentage of companies beating estimates had decreased when compared to the last earnings season.
Earnings from the likes of Twitter (NYSE:TWTR), Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO), Kellogg (NYSE:K), Viacom (NASDAQ:VIA), Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Expedia (NASDAQ:EXPE) are expected Thursday in one of the last big blasts of the earnings season.
In other corporate news, market participants will keep an eye on the airline industry as its chief executives visit the White House Thursday morning, the latest industry to speak to President Donald Trump.
The expected participants include the chief executives of Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL), JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ:JBLU), United Continental (NYSE:UAL), Atlas Air (NASDAQ:AAWW), Alaska Airlines and trade group Airlines for America, along with top officials from FedEx (NYSE:FDX) and United Parcel Service (NYSE:UPS).
On the data front, weekly jobless claims will be released at 8:30AM ET (13:30GMT), followed by wholesale inventories at 10:00AM ET (15:00GMT).
Additionally, both St. Louis Fed chief James Bullard and Chicago Fed president Charles Evans will speak Thursday on the economy and monetary policy.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was up 0.17% at 100.30 by 7:05AM ET (12:05GMT) ahead of the data and Fed appearances, just off Tuesday’s one-week high of 100.69.
Meanwhile, oil prices were on the rise on the back of bullish sentiment. Even though some commentators felt like a surprise draw of 869,000 barrels on gasoline stockpiles Wednesday in comparison to expectations for a 1.1 million barrel build was a sufficient excuse to explain the upward move in oil prices, they couldn’t deny the bearish implications of a whopping build of 13.8 million barrels.
Head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank Ole Hansen pointed out that the last five consecutive inventory reports were bearish but U.S. crude finished the day higher. Hansen noted the rally after four of the last five reports showed bigger than expected builds and asked the question: “Who is buying?”
On a positive note, Saxo Bank’s expert on Russian oil and gas Nadia Kazakova pointed out Thursday that recent data showed Moscow had achieved its promised cut of 100,000 barrels per day in January and that the full reduction of 300,000 barrels may be achieved ahead of schedule.