Gap's holiday season outlook, Alibaba slips in Hong Kong - what's moving markets
Investing.com -- U.S. stock futures point into the green following a mixed session on Wall Street, as traders pour through a raft of economic figures this week. Gap's (NYSE:GPS) quarterly profit tops estimates, sending shares soaring premarket, but the retailer joins peers Target (NYSE:TGT) and Walmart (NYSE:WMT) in flagging some caution over consumer spending heading into the holiday shopping season. Elsewhere, Chinese tech shares plummet after Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) scraps a planned spin-off of its cloud intelligence unit.
1. Futures tick mostly higher
U.S. stock futures inched higher on Friday, but remained relatively close to the flatline, as investors digested a week of key economic data and an ebbing stream of corporate earnings.
By 04:38 ET (09:38 GMT), the Dow futures contract had edged up by 66 points or 0.2%, S&P futures had risen by 8 points or 0.2%, and Nasdaq 100 futures were mostly unchanged.
In the prior session, the 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 1%, ending a four-day streak of gains, while the benchmark S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite both climbed by 0.1%. All three of the main indices on Wall Street remain on pace for their third consecutive positive week.
Sentiment in recent days has been aided by soft data for both consumer and wholesale prices in October, which have bolstered hopes that the Federal Reserve may have reached the end of an unprecedented and long-standing campaign of interest rate hikes. Whether this optimism can hold firm in the weeks to come remains a key source of debate among investors.
2. Gap's earnings beat
Shares in Gap surged in premarket U.S. trading on Friday after the retailer posted higher-than-anticipated third-quarter income, although the firm flagged
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