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Stock futures extend gains after S&P 500’s best day in seven weeks

Stock futures opened higher Thursday evening to hold gains after a recovery rally, with an initial wave of concerns over the economic impacts of the Omicron variant at least temporarily easing.

Contracts on the S&P 500 advanced. The blue-chip index closed higher by 1.4{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} during the regular session, marking its biggest jump since Oct. 14 Thursday. The Dow and Nasdaq each also advanced. Volatility from earlier this week retreated, and the CBOE Volatility index (^VIX) dipped 10{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} to below 28. And travel stocks including airlines, hotel and lodging firms held onto earlier gains in late trading as traders bought the pullback in these virus-sensitive areas of the market. 

The move higher in stocks on Thursday came as market participants digested recent headlines on the Omicron variant, including the discovery of multiple cases in the U.S. While vaccine-makers and epidemiologists have still been assessing the new variant’s transmissibility and severity of infection, investors have at least temporarily eased back from peak levels of concern. 

“The markets … have been pricing in, really, a worst-case scenario,” Jim Smiegiel, SEI chief investment officer, told Yahoo Finance Live. “So obviously, there was a ton of uncertainty … [but] you’re seeing today some signs of positive outlooks coming into play. The cases that we’ve seen so far in the States have been mild.” 

“I think the market is now switching gears a little bit and perhaps lessening the intensity on the potential for negative outcomes,” he added. “The big issue still remains more about the world government’s reaction to the variant and what that means from a lockdown perspective. And that’s what the market is still kind of struggling with at this stage.” 

Others have struck an even more optimistic tone, suggesting the economic impact of the Omicron variant will ultimately prove less drastic than initially feared. 

“If you look back at Delta, there really wasn’t a meaningful impact in terms of actual consumption … maybe we saw a little bit of a shift away from services in the early stages of the reopen back towards goods, but overall consumption held up just fine,” Garrett Melson, Natixis Investment Managers Solutions portfolio strategist, told Yahoo Finance Live on Thursday.

“And on the capex front, we still see signs that companies are saying they’re going to invest in their businesses and they’re doing just that,” Melson added. “Lockdowns are certainly not happening here in the U.S. There’s no appetite from the government and certainly no appetite from consumers.” 

Traders are also awaiting the U.S. Labor Department’s latest monthly jobs report Friday morning. The November jobs report is expected to show another more than half a million payrolls returned last month, with the unemployment taking another step down to reach a March 2020 low of 4.5{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}. The report comes following a slew of other positive data points on the labor market in recent days, with weekly unemployment claims coming in lower than expected, and ADP’s private payrolls report topping expectations on Wednesday.

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6:31 p.m. ET Thursday: Stock futures jump ahead of jobs report

Here were the main moves in markets during the overnight session:  

  • S&P 500 futures (ES=F): +11.5 points (+0.25{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}), to 4,587.25

  • Dow futures (YM=F): +94 points (+0.27{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}), to 34,716.00

  • Nasdaq futures (NQ=F): +34.50 points (+0.22{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}) to 16,023.00

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - AUGUST 10: People walk by the Wall Street Bull near the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on August 10, 2021 in New York City. Markets were up in morning trading as investors look to a rare bipartisan effort in the Senate to pass a massive infrastructure bill that, if passed, will infuse billions into the American economy. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – AUGUST 10: People walk by the Wall Street Bull near the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on August 10, 2021 in New York City. Markets were up in morning trading as investors look to a rare bipartisan effort in the Senate to pass a massive infrastructure bill that, if passed, will infuse billions into the American economy. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

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Emily McCormick is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter

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Stock futures extend gains as virus fears ease

Stock futures opened higher on Monday to hold onto gains after a recovery rally, with investors at least temporarily shaking off concerns over a new coronavirus variant and looking ahead to new market catalysts. 

Contracts on the S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq rose. Each of the three major indexes had ended the regular trading day solidly in the green, with technology stocks leading the way higher and helping pull the Nasdaq up by nearly 2{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}. 

Investors were heartened by remarks from the White House, when President Joe Biden said the newly discovered Omicron coronavirus variant was “not a cause for panic.” Biden said he intended to announce on Thursday the White House’s strategy for addressing coronavirus this winter, and that this plan would not include lockdowns, but would instead emphasize vaccinations, boosters and testing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday updated its guidance to say all individuals aged 18 and older “should” get a booster coronavirus vaccine, strengthening this from previous language primarily aimed at getting those considered most at risk an additional dose of the shots. 

Prospects that widespread lockdowns would likely not come to the U.S. in the face of the latest variant helped fuel a broad risk-on rally on Monday. This came in sharp contrast with Friday’s moves immediately following the World Health Organization’s announcement of Omicron as a “variant of concern,” which sparked the Dow’s worst plunge since Oct. 2020. 

“This is not a repeat of March 2020,” Paul Schatz, Heritage Capital President, told Yahoo Finance Live on Monday. “This looks nothing like March of 2020, yet it’s so recent in our history, people immediately think, ‘Omicron is here, oh my gosh this is going to be a 30{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} decline, we’re going to go straight down’ … You need to equally weigh history, not weigh it based on how recent it was in your memory.”

Still, the sectors and individual stocks that outperformed on Monday were largely technology names, which have served as defensive trades throughout the pandemic as investors bet on more stay-in-place behavior among consumers. 

But at the same time, the emergence of the latest variant has also led a number of pundits to speculate that the Federal Reserve might take a more dovish approach to monetary policy to continue supporting the economy as it deals with ongoing virus-related concerns. That could in turn keep interest rates low for longer and support longer-duration growth stocks. 

“To take a step back, I think you had a global economy that in the fourth quarter [of 2020] through last week was looking incredibly strong … and then a new variant comes along,” Andrew Sheets, Morgan Stanley chief cross-assets strategist, told Yahoo Finance Live. “That would seem to work against a lot of the trades that work in that high-growth environment, and also seemed to disrupt this ‘do central banks need to act more aggressively’ narrative, because if there’s a new variant, then maybe we should be more cautious.”

Major vaccine-makers including Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have already said they were collecting data on the Omicron variant and determining whether and how they would need to rework their existing vaccines to address it. Researchers have also not yet determined whether the new variant is definitively more easily transmitted, or responsible for more severe illness, than previous versions of the virus. 

“Information is coming rapidly, it’s evolving in real-time. You can understand why investors [last week] were taking a little bit of a pause, particularly given the liquidity situation we had going into the U.S. holiday season,” Vivek Paul, BlackRock investment institution U.K. chief investment strategist, told Yahoo Finance Live on Monday. “I think the reaction you see today puts it in a little bit of context. We’ve seen more information come out, clearly we have to await the science and a bit more detail with regards to the longevity of how Omicron plays out.”

“But we would be in-line with the market reaction today: We think on balance, it would make sense to be invested in the markets at this moment in time,” he added. “It’s all about understanding whether or not this is a delay, or a derailment, of the restart that we’ve seen. And it seems most likely at this moment — not withstanding more information to come— that it looks like a delay.” 

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6:15 p.m. ET Monday: Stock futures hold onto gains

Here were the main moves in markets as the overnight session kicked off: 

  • S&P 500 futures (ES=F): +9 points (+0.19{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}), to 4,660.00

  • Dow futures (YM=F): +78 points (+0.22{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}), to 35,155.00

  • Nasdaq futures (NQ=F): +29 points (+0.18{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}) to 16,419.75

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., November 29, 2021. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., November 29, 2021. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

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Emily McCormick is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter

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Stock futures give back some gains after S&P 500, Dow set record highs

Inventory futures hovered below report stages on Wednesday as investors eyed a slew of much better-than-envisioned earnings results from intently viewed know-how firms.

Contracts on each and every of the S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq traded just underneath the flat line as of 7 a.m. in New York. West Texas intermediate crude oil selling prices also pulled back again but remained close to their highest stage since 2014. Treasury yields dipped across the long finish of the curve, and the benchmark 10-year yield ticked under 1.6{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}. 

Google’s guardian-firm Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) edged lessen even right after submitting 3rd-quarter revenues and earnings that topped consensus estimates, fueled by a further more increase in on the web marketing expending specially among retailers on Google Lookup. YouTube and Google Cloud profits development, nevertheless, slowed in comparison to the prior quarter. Microsoft (MSFT) posted quarterly benefits that exceeded estimates on just about each individual significant metric, aided by a different surge in the company’s closely watched cloud computing company section. 

Exterior of the mega-cap engineering providers, a amount of other firms also posted resilient earnings benefits. Twitter (TWTR) shares acquired in late investing following putting up third-quarter revenue that had been about in-line with anticipations, while Wall Street experienced braced for the firm to see identical destructive impacts from Apple’s iOS privacy update as peer social media organization Snap (SNAP) experienced documented for the identical quarter. 

And chipmaker Innovative Micro Equipment (AMD) also shipped quarterly earnings that exceeded estimates and boosted its whole-yr forecast. The firm noted that offer chain constraints have been partially inhibiting its capability to meet desire to supply Laptop and video clip-recreation console chips, however CEO Lisa Su extra during AMD’s earnings call that she believed the existing provide-aspect challenges would boost up coming year. 

The hottest batch of earnings final results helped affirm to Wall Road that a lot of companies have been equipped to operate by growing cost pressures to proceed providing estimates-topping revenue and profits. Nevertheless a lot of pundits have suggested inflationary pressures and supply chain disruptions could very last for for a longer period than formerly expected, several have advised the impacts will be insurmountable to most major businesses. 

“What we’ve got from these source chain concerns is a near-term earnings challenge. I think it is really a little something we do have to watch in the very first 50 {21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} of the 12 months,” Lori Calvasina, RBC Cash Markets chief fairness strategist, advised Yahoo Finance on Tuesday. “Earnings growth is only monitoring at 4{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} or 6{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} in the initially two quarters of up coming calendar year. So businesses do have to continue to keep controlling via for the sector to continue on to transfer up.”

“But the truth is that the underlying economic backdrop simply is not stagnant,” she added. “I really just do not purchase into that stagflation argument at all.”

And on the need facet, American customers have revealed couple of symptoms of slowing their shelling out in the encounter of climbing inflation. The Conference Board said Tuesday that the share of people setting up to order properties, cars and important appliances elevated this thirty day period, even as small-expression inflation anticipations surged to a 13-yr higher. 

“The consumer’s bought tons of dollars suitable now so they never brain the reality that they are raising price ranges on us – and which is the tale suitable now,” Ryan Payne, TK, told Yahoo Finance Reside on Tuesday. “Which is why earnings are going up. You’ve got a quite price insensitive buyer, because we have acquired heaps of hard cash. Wages are likely up. And businesses can keep basically increasing their price ranges as their costs go up. And that is why we are kind of in this Goldilocks economic climate ideal now— another motive why the market’s going to keep on to climb better below.”

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7:04 a.m. ET: Inventory futures position to a somewhat decreased open 

Here’s the place markets have been investing forward of the opening bell:

  • S&P 500 futures (ES=F): -6.75 factors (-.15{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}), to 4,558.5

  • Dow futures (YM=F): -31 points (-.09{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}), to 35,613.00

  • Nasdaq futures (NQ=F): -33.5 factors (-.22{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}) to 15,511.50

  • Crude (CL=F): -$1.25 (-1.48{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}) to $83.40 a barrel

  • Gold (GC=F): -$2.40 (-.13{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}) to $1,791.00 for every ounce

  • 10-calendar year Treasury (^TNX): -2.2 bps to generate 1.596{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}

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6:04 p.m. ET: Inventory futures open up tiny changed 

Here is where by marketplaces have been trading as the right away session kicked off Tuesday night:

  • S&P 500 futures (ES=F): -.5 factors (-.01{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}), to 4,564.75

  • Dow futures (YM=F): -8 details (-.02{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}), to 35,636.00

  • Nasdaq futures (NQ=F): -4.75 details (-.03{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}) to 15,540.25

People walk past the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) at Wall Street and the 'Fearless Girl' statue on March 23, 2021 in New York City. - Wall Street stocks were under pressure early ahead of congressional testimony from Federal Reserve Chief Jerome Powell as US Treasury bond yields continued to retreat. (Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP) (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

Folks stroll past the New York Inventory Trade (NYSE) at Wall Road and the ‘Fearless Girl’ statue on March 23, 2021 in New York Town. – Wall Avenue shares were underneath pressure early ahead of congressional testimony from Federal Reserve Chief Jerome Powell as US Treasury bond yields ongoing to retreat. (Photograph by Angela Weiss / AFP) (Image by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Pictures)

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Emily McCormick is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Abide by her on Twitter