A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets from Mike

Dolan

Megacap Meta revived Big Tech jitters on Wall St

overnight as its pumped-up stock balked at an ostensibly decent

earnings update late Wednesday - but the mining sector was abuzz

about BHP's a possible $39 billion mega bid for Anglo

American.

In a reverse of the positive way markets treated Tesla's

beaten-down shares after a revenue miss the prior day,

Meta's headline beat triggered an out-of-hours 13% plunge in its

shares as investors appeared to focus on the scale of its

outsize spending on artificial intelligence projects.

The respective market reactions may have much to do with

investor positioning in advance - with Tesla down more than 40%

for the year before it reported and Meta up more than 40%.

Either way, the Meta retreat has dragged Wall St stock

futures back down about 0.5-1.0% ahead of

Thursday's bell and ups the ante as the 'Magnificent 7' reports

keep rolling in. Microsoft and Alphabet are under the microscope

later in the heaviest day of the earnings season so far.

With almost a third of the S&P500 reported already, nearly

80% have beaten estimates and reported earnings growth has

picked up close to 7% - back to where consensus forecasts for

the first quarter at the start of the year. And blended

first-quarter earnings estimates, which combine what's come in

with forecasts for those yet to report, have also climbed back

above 3% after a swoon earlier in the month.

Wary of the slightly jaundiced view of tech stocks this

month and mounting currency volatility in Asia, Japan's Nikkei

, South Korea's Kospi and Taiwan's benchmark

all lost 1-2% overnight.

Tech shivered in Europe on Thursday too, with STMicro

dropping 3% after the chipmaker cut full-year sales

guidance. European banks also topped the diary there but their

stocks largely batted away a series of beats.

The big corporate news was in mining and BHP's $39 billion

bid for London-listed Anglo American - a deal that would create

the world's biggest copper miner and which sent Anglo's shares

surging 13% on Thursday. Copper prices have risen more than 10%

this year.

With buoyant world growth and a likely geopolitical

scramble to secure scarce resources spurring commodity markets

of late, deal activity in the sector appears to have gone up a

gear and Britain's cheaply-valued, resource heavy FTSE 100 stock

index outperformed again to hit another record high.

Sterling was also higher.

So much for the micro - the macro view of the first three

months also hoves into view later on Thursday with the first

official cut of Q1 U.S. gross domestic product and related

inflation measures.

Consensus forecasts are for growth to have slowed to 2.4%

from 3.4% in the final quarter of last year - with core PCE

inflation estimates jumping to 3.4% from 2.0%.

However, the Atlanta Federal Reserve's GDPNow model has

growth running as high as 2.7% and Friday's March reading of the

Fed's favoured PCE inflation gauge will likely dominate for

anxious rates markets.

In heavy week for U.S. Treasury debt sales, two-year yields

continued to hover just under 5%.

The dollar slipped back against the euro and

sterling, but it continues to zoom ever higher against the

Japanese yen to another 34-year high of 155.68 as the

Bank of Japan starts its latest two-day meeting.

With no sign yet of any intervention to arrest the yen

slide, the indication from Japan's government is that may not be

considered until the dollar threatens 160 yen.

Key diary items that may provide direction to U.S. markets later

on Thursday:

* US Q1 gross domestic product, weekly jobless claims, March

trade balance and wholesale/retail inventories, Kansas City

Fed's April business survey

* US corporate earnings: Microsoft, Alphabet, Intel, Eastman

Chemical, Honeywell, Dow, Caterpillar, Union Pacific,

Bristol-Myers Squibb, Altria, Northrop Grumman, Capital One,

Nasdaq, S&P Global, VeriSign, American Airlines, Mohawk,

Southwest Airlines, PG&E, Keurig Dr Pepper, Weyerhauser,

International Paper, Wills Towers Watson, AO Smith, Western

Digital, L3Harris, Principal Financial, Cincinnati Financial,

Hartford Financial, Newmont, Dover, WW Grainger, Textron, Valero

Energy, CMS Energy, Xcel Energy, First Energy, Allegion, Royal

Caribbean etc

* Bank of Japan begins two-day policy meeting. European Central

Bank board member Isabel Schnabel speaks

* US Treasury sells $44 billion of 7-year notes

(By Mike Dolan; Editing by Toby

[email protected])