By Peter Nurse
Investing.com -- U.S. stocks are seen opening lower Tuesday, handing back some of the previous session’s late gains ahead of the start of the Big Tech quarterly earnings season.
At 7 AM ET (1100 GMT), the Dow Futures contract was down 125 points, or 0.4%, S&P 500 Futures traded 15 points, or 0.4%, lower and Nasdaq 100 Futures dropped 60 points, or 0.4%.
The three main Wall Street indices reversed losses late in Monday’s session, with the blue chip Dow Jones Industrial Average gaining 0.7%, after cutting a 500-point loss from earlier in the day, the broad-based S&P 500 gained 0.6%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite leading the way, gaining 1.3%.
Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) was the major focus, with the social media platform finally accepting Elon Musk’s $44 billion offer to take it private. It will remain in the spotlight Tuesday as investors debate what Musk plans to do with the networking service.
Tuesday also marks the start of a slew of reports from big tech companies, with both Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) reporting after the close. First quarter expectations are muted, with the disappointing Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) subscriber numbers exacerbating concerns about earnings in the sector.
Delivery firm UPS (NYSE:UPS), soft drinks giant PepsiCo (NASDAQ:PEP) and industrial conglomerate 3M (NYSE:MMM) are among the companies that are reporting earnings early in the session.
Equity markets have struggled for most of this year amid concerns over a slowing economy, record inflation readings and the associated hawkish pivot by the Federal Reserve.
The Dow is down over 6% year-to-date, the S&P 500 almost 10% lower, and the Nasdaq Composite approaching 17% lower. However, this slide may be coming to an end, at least for now, according to Citigroup.
The U.S. bank pointed to slowing outflows from exchange-traded funds and repositioning in futures contracts, stating “we are near peak investor bearishness across equity markets, though there are not yet any bullish reversals.”
The CB Consumer Confidence index, which measures the level of consumer confidence in economic activity, is due at 10 AM ET, and is expected to improve slightly to 108.0 in April, from 107.2 the previous month. There are also fresh numbers for March new home sales and durable goods orders.
Oil prices stabilized Tuesday, after the sharp losses of the previous session, but concerns remain that more COVID-19 lockdowns in China will hit demand for crude from the world’s largest importer.
Weekly U.S. crude oil supply data from the American Petroleum Institute are due later in the day.
By 7 AM ET, U.S. crude futures traded 0.4% higher at $98.95 a barrel, while the Brent contract fell 0.7% to $102.88. Both benchmarks dropped around 4% on Monday.
Additionally, gold futures rose 0.7% to $1,910.10/oz, while EUR/USD traded 0.2% lower at 1.0690.