© Reuters.
By Peter Nurse
Investing.com — U.S. stocks are seen opening higher Friday, bouncing at the end of a difficult week as investors fretted about the likelihood of slowing growth with persistent inflation pushing the Federal Reserve into aggressive monetary policy tightening.
At 7 AM ET (1100 GMT), the contract was up 250 points, or 0.8%, traded 45 points, or 1.2%, higher and climbed 205 points, or 1.7%.
Federal Reserve Chairman warned in an interview on Thursday that getting inflation under control could cause some economic pain, adding that a so-called soft landing will be difficult to accomplish. That said, he also pushed back against the idea of raising key interest rates by 75 basis points at the Fed’s next policy meeting.
The raised its benchmark overnight by 50 basis points last week, the largest hike in 22 years.
The blue-chip closed over 100 points lower on Thursday, its sixth straight negative session, while the broad-based closed more than 18% below its all-time high, rapidly approaching an official bear market.
The tech-heavy posted a small gain on Thursday but has suffered the brunt of the recent selling and is already in a bear market, down more than 29% from its all-time high.
In the corporate sector, Twitter (NYSE:) stock slumped over 20% in premarket reading after Elon Musk said on Friday his $44 billion deal to take the company private is “temporarily on hold,” while the two sides wrangle over the extent of fake and spam accounts on the social media network.
Affirm (NASDAQ:) stock surged over 30% after the buy-now-pay-later company beat expectations on both the top and bottom line, while Robinhood (NASDAQ:) stock gained over 22% after a regulatory filing said Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has acquired a 7.6% stake in the retail brokerage.
The economic data calendar is light Friday, but investors will study the release of May’s reading, at 10 AM ET (1400 GMT), which is expected to show a slight deterioration of confidence as households battle rising food and gasoline prices.
Oil prices rose Friday, but still looked set to register their first weekly loss in three as concerns about faltering global demand seemingly outweighed the prospect of a European Union ban on Russian oil tightening supply.
The number of U.S. oil rigs by and are scheduled for release later in the session, rounding off the week.
By 7 AM ET, futures traded 1.9% higher at $108.17 a barrel, on course to fall around 2% this week, while the contract rose 1.9% to $109.46, set to drop nearly 3% this week.
Additionally, fell 0.4% to $1,817.30/oz, while traded 0.1% higher at 1.0384.
Be the first to comment