Stock futures opened higher Thursday evening after a mixed session in the markets, with both earnings and inflation data remaining at the center of investor attention.
Contracts on the S&P 500 edged higher. Earlier Thursday, the index rose for the first time in three sessions, buoyed by a jump in technology stocks that posted a rebound after a drop on Wednesday. The index was on track to end the week marginally lower after five straight weeks of gains, but still held just slightly below all-time highs.
“We’ve got a market that is just incredible. No matter what it’s going up, and that shouldn’t be much a surprise given how much money has been pushed into the system,” Lenore Hawkins, Tematica Research chief macro strategist, told Yahoo Finance Live. “There’s just a lot of money chasing not a whole lot of alternatives.”
That said, a hotter-than-expected inflation print earlier this week was one key concern for investors, and reinforced that elevated price pressures were not as fleeting as many had initially expected during the recovery. Consumer prices rose at their fastest clip in 31 years in October, or by a marked 6.2% versus the same month last year, to accelerate from September’s already lofty 5.4% year-on-year rise.
The rise in prices carries implications both for corporations— many of which have had to try and pass on rising prices to end consumers to preserve margins — and for the Federal Reserve. Market pricing currently suggests the Federal Reserve will step in by mid-next year to raise interest rates to try and temper the broadening inflationary trends.
Still, many economists have reaffirmed that the inflationary pressures will eventually ease, albeit while likely settling at a higher level than had been present before the pandemic.
“Inflation should moderate. We’re talking about settling at 2%, 2.5% over the course of the next 12 months,” Gabriela Santos, JPMorgan Asset Management global market strategist, told Yahoo Finance Live. “So we’re still talking about real wage gains, and that’s extremely supportive certainly of people’s livelihoods, but also of consumption and hence the economy overall.”
“We do expect a big re-acceleration in growth starting this quarter and throughout next year, [and] 5% average growth just over the next three quarters,” she added. “So we would characterize this not as stagflation, but as reflation. And that difference is, reflation is actually quite good for earnings growth and quite good for the stock market, especially cyclical sectors.”
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6:11 p.m. ET Thursday: Stock futures drift lower ahead of inflation data
Here’s where markets were trading Thursday evening:
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S&P 500 futures (ES=F): +4.5 points (+0.1%), to 4,647.50
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Dow futures (YM=F): +41 points (+0.11%), to 35,870.00
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Nasdaq futures (NQ=F): +19.5 points (+0.12%) to 16,042.25
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., October 27, 2021. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
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Emily McCormick is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock-market-news-live-updates-november-12-2021-231704595.html