Wall Street pointed to a slightly higher opening on Thursday, helped by a bump in high-flying stocks such as Apple and Amazon, and the Federal Reserve's confidence in the strength of the economy as it raised rates for the third time this year.
Steady Economic Growth
The Fed, as expected, raised interest rates on Wednesday, and left its monetary policy outlook for the coming years largely unchanged amid steady economic growth and a strong job market, adding it did not expect any surprises on inflation.
Wall Street initially rose after the statement on Wednesday, but pulled back to close lower.
"We had a good flush in the last few hours of yesterday, so today we are going to catch a little bit of a bounce," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley FBR in New York.
"The FAANG group hasn't done a whole lot in the past two weeks but go down, and now that we're on the other side of the Fed decision, perhaps they can catch a bit of a relief rally."
The Gainers
Shares of Apple rose 1.5% in premarket trading after JP Morgan started coverage with an "overweight" rating, citing the iPhone maker's quicker-than-expected move to a services business.
Amazon.com rose 0.8% after brokerage Stifel talked up the company's retail, cloud, and advertising businesses, even as the online retailer was set to open a brick-and-mortar store in New York City.
The other so-called FAANG stocks - Facebook, Netflix and Google-parent Alphabet - were also trading higher.
US economic growth accelerated in the second quarter at its fastest pace in nearly four years as previously estimated, putting the economy on track to hit the Trump administration's goal of 3% annual growth.
At 9.08am ET, Dow e-minis were up 42 points, or 0.16%. S&P 500 e-minis were up 5.25 points, or 0.18% and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 28.75 points, or 0.38%.
Other Companies
Accenture shares fell 2.3% as the consulting and outsourcing services company's full-year profit fell slightly short of analysts' estimates.
Conagra and McCormick, both dropped about 5%, after the food companies posted quarterly revenue that missed analysts' estimates.
Their results weighed on Kraft Heinz, Mondelez , General Mills, J M Smucker and Campbell Soup, which fell between 0.6% and 1.3%.
Geron plunged 68.5% after Johnson & Johnson's Janssen ended a collaboration to develop a blood disorder drug.
News by Reuters, edited by ESM. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
