Day Traders Diary

10/28/21

The major averages are higher premarket Thursday, a day after the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped from their record highs as more earnings keep rolling in. The Dow Jones is set to rise 72 points. The S&P 500 is up 14 points while the Nasdaq is up 79 points.

Ford saw its shares jump more than 9% on blockbuster earnings while also raising guidance. The automaker said increased availability of semiconductors during the quarter allowed it to ramp up production.

Shares of Twilio fell around 13% in after-hours trade, despite a beat on both earnings and revenue for the third quarter, after the cloud communications platform projected a fourth-quarter loss. Ebay also fell by about 5% on weak fourth-quarter revenue guidance.

Pharmaceutical giant and Dow component Merck saw its shares rise nearly 1% premarket after the company posted an earnings beat on the top and bottom lines. Fellow bluechip index company Caterpillar topped profit estimates but fell just shy on revenue, sending its shares up nearly 2%.

The move higher for futures came despite a disappointing economic report on Thursday. GDP growth for the third-quarter came in at 2.0%, below the 2.8% expected. The reading marks a slowdown from 6.7% growth in the second quarter.

On a more positive note for the economy, weekly initial jobless claims came in at 281,000. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones were expecting 289,000 claims.

The market will be getting more big earnings news, with tech giants Amazon and Apple reporting after the closing bell. NBC Universal and CNBC.com parent Comcast posted a solid earnings beat before the bell, sending shares up 3.4%.

Nearly 40% of S&P 500 companies have reported earnings and more than 80% of them beat Wall Street expectations, according to CNBC calculations. S&P 500 companies are expected to grow profit by about 37.6% in the third quarter.

Investors awaited the first estimate for third-quarter annualized gross domestic product growth from the Commerce Department. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected an increase of just 2.8% as products remained stranded at normally bustling ports, employers struggled to find workers and consumers battled with inflation.

Wall Street was also monitoring events in Washington, where Democrats and President Joe Biden appear to be nearing a deal on a social spending bill. NBC News reported that Biden will unveil details of the deal later on Thursday