Wall Street turns its attention to corporate earnings
Stock futures pointed to a mixed opening for the main U.S. stock indices on Monday as market participants await big banks to kick off the much-awaited corporate earnings season.
Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) are scheduled to report earnings on Tuesday.
Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) and Citigroup (NYSE: C) will publish their results on Wednesday while Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) announces on Thursday.
As of 5:30 a.m. ET, futures tied to the blue-chip Dow were down 132 points, or 0.38% to 34,619. S&P 500 futures gave away 7.62 points, or 0.17% to 4,352.38 while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures advanced 37.38 points, or 0.25% to 14,847.88.
No major economic releases are expected for the day.
Virgin Galactic stocks flies higher following Branson’s successful test space flight
Shares of Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE) surged before the opening bell Monday after founder and billionaire Richard Branson successfully completed a daring flight to the edge of space aboard the VSS Unity spacecraft on Sunday morning.
The spacecraft reached a speed of 2,300 mph and attained an altitude of 53.5 miles above the Earth. It stayed in space for several minutes before landing in Virgin’s Spaceport America in New Mexico.
Later this month, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos is also scheduled to launch into space via his a spacecraft designed by Blue Origin, his space venture.
As of writing, Virgin Galactic stock was up $3.60, or 7.32% to $52.80 per share in the pre-market trading session.
TikTok owner reportedly shelved U.S. IPO due to Beijing pressure
In other news, TikTok owner ByteDance indefinitely suspended its plans for U.S. initial public offering earlier this year after Chinese authorities asked the company to focus on addressing data-security risks, the Wall Street Journal reports.
According to the Journal, Founder Zhang Yiming decided to put the plans on hold in late March following meetings with the authorities, where the social media giant was told to address data-security risks and other issues.
The report added that ByteDance also shelved the IPO because the company did not have a chief financial officer at the time.
Contrastingly, Didi Global (NYSE: DIDI) went ahead with its U.S. listing and its shares are now tumbling after Chinese authorities announced a probe into the ride-hailing firm.
