Wall Street Futures Rise After Meta Results, Fed Optimism

Wall Street futures rose on Thursday, supported by a surge in Meta Platforms after its strong third-quarter revenue forecast lifted megacap growth and technology stocks, and hopes that the U.S. Federal Reserve’s July rate hike was the last this year.

Meta Platforms (META.O) gained 8.6% in premarket trading after it also reported a jump in second-quarter advertising revenue, topping Wall Street financial targets.

The Facebook parent’s results followed a strong performance by Alphabet (GOOGL.O) earlier this week, which show that consumers, and advertisers eager to reach them, are spending despite broad economic concerns.

Outsized gains in megacap growth stocks has helped Nasdaq (.IXIC) lead the charge on Wall Street so far this year, but Dow (.DJI) is catching up as investors bet on sectors beyond technology.

The blue-chips Dow is on track for its 14th straight day of gains after a scorching rally that saw it log its longest winning streak since 1987 in the previous session.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points as expected, and now traders expect only a 20% chance that the Fed could surprise with a quarter-point increase in September. FEDWATCH

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the economy still needed to slow and the labor market to weaken for inflation to “credibly” return to the U.S. central bank’s 2% target.

“We continue to expect that today’s hike will be the last of the cycle. Powell said that the FOMC will be particularly focused on the inflation data, and we expect the next few CPI reports to be soft,” said David Mericle, chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs, in a note.

On tap on the economic front, the Commerce Department is set to report that the U.S. gross domestic product increased at a 1.8% annualized rate last quarter, in its advance estimate of second-quarter GDP growth.

At 7:01 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 48 points, or 0.13%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 26 points, or 0.57%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 186 points, or 1.19%.

Netflix (NFLX.O) climbed 0.8% after a report that it was restructuring its advertising partnership with Microsoft (MSFT.O) for its lower-priced ad-supported subscription plan and also cutting ad prices.

EBay (EBAY.O) forecast third-quarter profit below market expectations as the e-commerce platform spent more to bolster categories such as auto parts, refurbished goods and collectibles, sending its shares down 5.3%.

Chipmakers including Nvidia (NVDA.O), Micron (MU.O) and Marvell Technology (MRVL.O) rose between 2% and 4% after Lam Research (LRCX.O) forecast upbeat quarterly sales. Shares of Lam rose 3.3%.

Universal banks including Citigroup (C.N), Wells Fargo (WFC.N) and Bank of America crept higher between 0.2% and 0.6%, ahead of a rule that U.S. regulators are set to unveil later in the day that could significantly raise capital requirements for the lenders.

Southwest Airlines (LUV.N) tumbled 6.9% after the airline warned of higher labor costs for the year and posted a dip in second-quarter profit.

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