Fed to kick off two-day policy meeting
U.S. stock futures tiptoed backward in Tuesday morning trading, ahead of a busy day of corporate earnings reports and the start of the Federal Reserve monetary policy meeting.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) begins a two-day monetary policy meeting today, after minutes of its June 15-16 meeting showed “various participants” felt conditions for slowing the Fed’s bond purchases would be met somewhat earlier than the committee had anticipated.
The central bank wraps up its meeting at 2 p.m. ET tomorrow with a statement, followed by Chairman Jerome Powell’s press conference.
As of 5:20 a.m. ET, the blue-chip Dow futures tumbled 191 points, or 0.55% to 34,843. S&P 500 futures gave away 18.25 points, or 0.41% to 4,396 while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures dropped 35.75 points, or 0.24% to 15,082.
Apple, Microsoft, Google earnings on tap
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is set to unveil financial results for its most recent quarter after the closing bell today. Analysts see the iPhone maker reporting third-quarter earnings of $1 per share on revenue of $72.93 billion.
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is expected to announce fourth-quarter earnings of $1.90 per share and revenue of $44.10 billion.
Analysts see Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) reporting earnings of $19.21 a share and revenue of $56.02 billion.
Xerox (NYSE: XRX), Raytheon (NYSE: RTX), 3M (NYSE: MMM), General Electric (NYSE: GE), UPS (NYSE: UPS), and Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) are also scheduled to print their results today.
Tesla rises modestly after posting $1 billion profit in Q2
Meanwhile, Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) shares were moving higher in the premarket trading session after the company announced upbeat second-quarter earnings after the bell Monday.
The electric-car maker posted a profit of $1.14 billion, or $1.02 per share during the quarter, up from $104 million, or 10 cents per share, in the same period last year.
Adjusted earnings came in at $1.45 per share, well above the consensus estimate for earnings of 96 cents per share.
Revenue stood at $11.96 billion, up 98% from $6.04 billion reported in the prior-year quarter and above analysts’ expectations of $11.21 billion.
CEO Elon Musk told analysts during the presentation of the results that he would be unlikely to be on future Tesla earnings calls unless there’s something important he has to need to say.
At the time of writing, Tesla shares were marked $13.69, or 2.08% to $671.31 apiece.
