Stock market today: Wall Street slides in premarket as airlines, Big Tech report earnings
Markets on Wall Street gave back some of this week’s gains ahead of another heavy slate of corporate earnings and the government’s initial estimate of how the U.S. economy fared in the first quarter of 2024
Markets on Wall Street gave back some of this week's gains early Thursday ahead of another heavy slate of corporate earnings and the government's initial estimate of how the U.S. economy fared in the first quarter of 2024.
Futures for the Dow Jones industrials and the S&P 500 each declined 0.6% before the bell.
Southwest Airlines fell nearly 8% after the carrier said it lost $231 million in the first quarter and will limit hiring, offer voluntary leave to employees and stop flying to four airports. CEO Robert Jordan said the airline was reacting quickly “to address our financial underperformance” and cope with delayed deliveries of new planes from Boeing.
American Airlines reported a $312 million loss in its most recent quarter as labor costs rose, but said it expects to return to profitability in the second quarter. That sent its stock up 5.2% before markets opened Thursday.
Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta fell 15.6% in after hours trading when it issued lukewarm revenue guidance after the bell Wednesday along with otherwise strong first-quarter financial results.
Two others of the “Magnificant Seven” stocks — Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft — report their most recent quarterly results after the bell Thursday. Those companies drove most of the U.S. stock market’s gain last year, and they’ll need to perform to justify their high prices.
The hope is that profit growth will broaden beyond the Magnificent Seven to other types of companies, in large part because of a remarkably solid U.S. economy.
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