By Sagarika Jaisinghani
(Reuters) – Futures tracking the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq indexes hovered near record highs on Friday as optimism around a speedy economic recovery overshadowed the Federal Reserve’s hawkish stance on monetary stimulus.
Wall Street’s main indexes were jolted earlier this week after the Fed unexpectedly signaled it could begin tapering its massive stimulus sooner than expected, setting the benchmark S&P 500 on course to snap a three-week winning streak.
However, investors returned to heavyweight technology stocks in particular on Thursday, focusing on the Fed’s projection of the economy growing a faster-than-expected 7% this year.
Shares of Apple Inc, Facebook Inc, Nvidia Corp and Google-parent Alphabet Inc rose as much as 1.2% in premarket trading.
Tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures were up 0.2% by 06:36 a.m. ET.
Dow e-minis and S&P 500 e-minis, on the other hand, were down 0.11%. The blue-chip Dow is on course for its second straight week of losses, with mining, financial and industrial stocks among the biggest decliners.
Shares of banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Citigroup Inc, which tend to perform better when interest rates are high, fell between 0.2% and 0.5%, tracking a dip in bond yields. [US/]
U.S. e-commerce group eBay rose 1% as Norway’s Adevinta said the two companies had secured final regulatory approval for a tie-up of their global classified ads businesses.
Transportation finance and logistics company CAI International Inc surged 45% after it agreed to a $1.1 billion takeover by Mitsubishi HC Capital Inc.
(Reporting by Sagarika Jaisinghani in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
