U.S. stocks were falling on Thursday, continuing the previous session’s sharp selloff in the wake of the surprise U.S. downgrade and ahead of earnings from tech bellwether Apple and e-commerce giant Amazon.
At 11:15 ET (15:15 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 96 points, or 0.3%, while the S&P 500 was down 0.3% and the NASDAQ Composite was down less than 0.1%.
The benchmark Wall Street indices closed with hefty losses Wednesday after Fitch downgraded the U.S. government’s credit rating to AA+ from AAA late Tuesday, citing likely fiscal deterioration over the next three years as well as the usual protracted debt ceiling negotiations.
Apple, Amazon dominate earnings slate
While sentiment remains fragile, the focus Thursday is likely to be on Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), the largest company in the world according to market capitalization, and online retail behemoth Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) as they are scheduled to announce their quarterly earnings, in what has already been a busy week of corporate results.
Apple is likely to report a third straight quarter of declining revenue, with details about its current quarter, which ends in September, likely to be in focus. Investors may also be interested if the iPhone maker has any plans to integrate artificial intelligence into its operations.
At Amazon, the group’s key cloud computing division will be in the spotlight, with the retail giant having previously flagged that a deceleration in growth in the prior quarter at the unit, Amazon Web Services, continued into April.
Brewing giant Anheuser-Busch InBev (EBR:ABI) rose 0.8% after beating expectations, while chipmaker Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) stock slumped 10.7% with a current-quarter revenue forecast that was below market estimates.
DoorDash (NYSE:DASH) stock rose more than 3% after the delivery firm raised its annual core profit forecast for a second time and posted an upbeat quarterly revenue as groceries and food orders jumped.
Weekly jobless claims data due
There is more labor market data to digest Thursday, in the form of the weekly initial jobless claims, ahead of Friday’s July payrolls report.
Data released Wednesday showed that U.S. private payrolls increased more than expected in July, jumping by 324,000 jobs last month, according to the ADP National Employment report.
Factory orders rose 2.3%, slightly more than the 2.2% expected, while non-manufacturing PMI was 52.7, slightly below the 53 expected.
The Federal Reserve next meets in September and will be studying this incoming data in order to inform their future interest rate decisions.
Crude stabilized after U.S. inventories slump
Oil prices stabilized Thursday after the previous session’s sharp losses in the wake of the U.S. downgrade, helped by a record drop in U.S. inventories which indicated a substantial tightening in crude markets.
Official data, released Wednesday, showed that U.S. crude inventories shrank by over 17 million barrels in the week to July 28 – the biggest drop recorded in data stretching back to 1982.
(Oliver Gray and Peter Nurse contributed to this article.)
