Futures slightly higher
U.S. stock futures were pointing to a slightly positive open on Friday as market participants turned their attention to earnings and a key summit of European Union leaders later today.
By 5:20 a.m. ET, the blue-chip Dow futures indicated a gain of 35 points to 26,588. S&P 500 futures gained 8.38 points, or 0.26% to 3,2028.88 while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures were up 104.37 points, or 0.99% to 10,616.12.
Before-the-bell earnings reports today include BlackRock (NYSE: BLK), State Street (NYSE: STT), and Citizens Financial (NYSE: CFG).
Traders will also be watching the two-day EU summit that kicks off today, where a 750-billion-euro recovery fund and the EU budget for 2021-2027 will be in on top of the agenda.
Netflix shares tumble on downbeat Q3 guidance
Meanwhile, shares in Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) slid in the pre-market trading session Friday after the streaming giant fell short of analyst expectations on per-share earnings and provided weak subscriber growth outlook for the current quarter.
Netflix reported on Thursday evening that it earned $1.59 per share on revenue of $6.15 billion in the second quarter. Analysts expected the company to have earned $1.81 per share on revenue of $6.08 billion, according to Refinitiv.
The company added a second-quarter record 10 million global paid memberships for a total of 193 million, thanks to the shelter-in-place orders prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.
However, it warned that it expects to only add 2.5 million new subscribers in the third quarter. That is below Wall Street’s forecasts of 5.27 million.
Netflix also said it has named chief content officer Ted Sarandos as co-chief executive officer. As of this writing, Netflix stock was down $35.14, or 6.66% to $492.25 a share pre-market.
Twitter says about 130 accounts were hacked in Bitcoin scam
In other news, Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) has revealed that around 130 accounts were targeted by attackers in the massive hack that took place on its platform on Wednesday.
“We believe approximately 130 accounts were targeted by the attackers in some way as part of the incident. For a small subset of these accounts, the attackers were able to gain control of the accounts and then send Tweets from those accounts,” wrote the Twitter Support account.
Twitter added that it was continuing to investigate whether the hackers were able to access private data of the affected accounts. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has opened investigation into the attack, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The hackers took over the accounts of high-profile individuals including Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kanye West. Uber (NYSE: UBER), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and other brands were also targeted. The hackers then used the accounts to send out tweets asking followers to donate money in Bitcoin.
Twitter shares were little changed in the pre-market trading session on Friday.
