(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures rebounded on Friday as Amazon.com Inc’s robust earnings for the holiday reason lifted the mood at the end of a week of volatile trading that saw mixed earnings from Big Tech firms.
The world’s largest retailer jumped 12.7% in premarket trading on plans to raise the price of its annual U.S. Prime subscriptions to offset higher costs.
The main U.S. stock indexes tumbled on Thursday after Facebook-owner Meta Platforms Inc’s shares plunged 26% following a dour outlook, thwarting the stock market’s attempt at a recovery on upbeat earnings from other megacap growth companies such as Google-parent Alphabet Inc and Microsoft Corp.
Meta, Apple Inc, Netflix Inc and Alphabet firmed between 0.4% and 1.8%.
At 5:09 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 36 points, or 0.1%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 24.75 points, or 0.55%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 180 points, or 1.24%.
In focus will be the Labor Department’s monthly nonfarm payrolls numbers on Friday that are likely to show U.S. job growth slowed sharply in January as COVID-19 infections lashed the nation.
The data is due to be released at 8:30 a.m. ET (1330 GMT).
“Investors will likely look past what is sure to be a weak jobs report,” said Bryce Doty, portfolio manager at Sit Fixed Income Advisors.
“Slowing COVID-19 cases combined with a Fed unlikely to be deterred from its mission to raise rates should keep investors from dwelling too long on January’s economic data.”
(Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
