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Futures down: Dow 0.18%, S&P 500 0.43%, Nasdaq 0.62%
Nov 21 (Reuters) - Nasdaq futures led declines among
U.S. stock index futures on Thursday, with Nvidia's ( NVDA ) shares
falling in premarket trading after investors were unimpressed by
the AI leader's revenue forecast.
At 04:20 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were down 80 points,
or 0.18%, S&P 500 E-minis were down 25.75 points, or
0.43%, and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were down 127.75 points,
or 0.62%.
Nvidia ( NVDA ) beat quarterly profit expectations, but the
company projected its slowest revenue growth in seven quarters
and its adjusted gross margins shrank, sending its shares down
3.8% in premarket trading.
"At face value, Nvidia ( NVDA ) has once again generated the kind of
growth that most companies will never achieve in their
lifespan," said Dan Coatsworth, investment analyst at AJ Bell.
"What's troubled investors this time was a
quarter-on-quarter decline in gross margins, with guidance for
them to fall further in the coming quarter and
weaker-than-expected forward guidance for revenue."
The sentiment spread to other chip stocks, with Broadcom ( AVGO )
down 1%, Qualcomm ( QCOM ) losing 1.1% and Advanced
Micro Devices ( AMD ) off 0.7%.
Growth stocks also dipped. Microsoft ( MSFT ) was down 0.3%,
while Apple ( AAPL ) and Amazon.com ( AMZN ) slipped 0.2% each.
Nvidia ( NVDA ) has led much of the U.S. market rally since mid-2023,
on expectations that artificial intelligence integration could
boost corporate profits. The stock has risen more than ninefold
in the past two years and the company boasts a market value of
$3.5 trillion.
Wall Street indexes have retreated from their record highs,
with post-election euphoria giving in to caution after
President-elect Donald Trump named his cabinet picks, as markets
weigh the potential inflationary impact of his policies.
Investors also kept an eye on escalating tensions between
Russia and Ukraine, after Russia launched an intercontinental
ballistic missile in retaliation against Ukraine's strike using
American and British missiles earlier this week.
On the data front, a weekly report on jobless claims is due
at 8.30 a.m. ET, while comments from Federal Reserve officials
Beth Hammack, Austan Goolsbee and Vice Chair for Supervision
Michael Barr are on tap.
Money market participants are pricing in a higher chance of
the Fed lowering interest rates by 25 basis points at its
December meeting - about 55.7%, according to the CME Group's
FedWatch.
Alphabet dropped 0.5% after the Justice Department
argued to a judge that Google must sell its Chrome browser and
take other measures to end its monopoly on online search.
Crypto stocks such as MARA Holdings ( MARA ) jumped 9.3%,
MicroStrategy ( MSTR ) soared 8.6% and Coinbase gained
2.9% as bitcoin prices soared to nearly $100,000 for the
first time.
Deere, Baidu and PDD Holdings ( PDD ) are
among companies set to report quarterly earnings before market
open.
Snowflake raised its annual product revenue
forecast and said it has teamed up with AI firm Anthropic to
build up its cloud services, sending the data analytics
provider's shares up 20%.
Palo Alto Networks ( PANW ) lost 5.3% after announcing a
two-for-one forward stock split after the cybersecurity firm
topped quarterly revenue and profit expectations.