US stock futures edged higher on Friday as investors look ahead to the latest producer inflation report and corporate earnings from major banks. JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo will report quarterly results on Friday, along with Bank of New York Mellon, BlackRock and Fastenal. In regular trading on Thursday, the Dow fell 0.14%, the S&P 500 dropped 0.21% and the Nasdaq Composite shed 0.05%. Those moves came as US consumer inflation numbers slowed less than expected in September, raising concerns that further hot inflation data could force the Federal Reserve to skip a rate cut in December or January. Additionally, initial jobless claims surprised on the upside, reaching a fresh 14-month high of 258K. In corporate news, investors awaited Tesla’s highly-anticipated robotaxi event, while AMD launched a new artificial intelligence chip to challenge Nvidia’s GPUs.
The DAX traded around the 19220 level on Friday, tracking a general cautious mood among its European peers, as traders continue to digest a hotter-than-expected inflation print for the US and await further Chinese stimulus updates over the weekend. Fresenius Medical Care (-1%), Bayer (-1.6%), Qiagen NV (-2.6%) were among the worst performers and the auto sector was also under pressure, namely VW (-0.7%) and BMW (-0.8%). In contrast, Siemens Energy (2.5%), Zalando (1.2%) and Airbus (1.2%) were in the green. On the week, the DAX added 0.5%.
The BSE Sensex fell 156 points or 0.2% to 81,456 on Friday morning trade, halting gains from the prior day. Caution was built ahead of inflation data Monday, with the market expecting to rise to 5.04% in September, the highest since June, due to unfavorable base effects and rising food prices. Traders continued to brace for quarterly earnings reports amid a lack of significant catalysts. The Nifty 50 fell 0.2% to below 25,000, mainly pressured by the banking and financial services sector, with notable losses from Cipla (-1.3%), ICICI Bank (-0.7%), and Bajaj Finance (-0.6%). TCS fell 1.2% after posting a profit that missed estimates.
The Shanghai Composite fell 2.55% to close at 3,218 while the Shenzhen Component dropped 3.92% to 10,061 on Friday, with both benchmarks ending the week sharply lower as profit-taking and concerns about the effectiveness of monetary stimulus measures in boosting growth prevailed. Investors also cautiously awaited announcements of further stimulus measures from a finance ministry press conference on Saturday. Markets are speculating that finance officials will announce a major fiscal stimulus package which is expected to range between 2-3 trillion yuan. On Thursday, China’s central bank opened a swap facility initially worth 500 billion yuan to fund stock purchases of financial institutions as the recent stimulus rally started to fade. Notable losses were seen from heavyweight firms like Contemporary Amperex (-6.3%), Tianfeng Securities (-10%), Ping An Insurance (-1.6%), Kweichow Moutai (-2.1%) and Shenzhen Infogem (-15.3%).
