Stock futures inch higher after S&P 500 closes at a record, Disney shares jump

Finance news

Trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Source: NYSE

Stock futures inched higher on Friday as the S&P 500 seeks to end a winning week on a high note.

Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 50 points. S&P 500 futures added 0.1% and Nasdaq 100 futures were slightly in the green.

Shares of Disney jumped more than 5% in premarket trading after the media and theme park giant reported blowout fiscal third-quarter earnings, crushing Wall Street expectations on Disney+ subscriber growth and overall revenue and earnings.

The blue-chip Dow and the S&P 500 are on track to close out a winning week after gaining 0.8% and 0.6%, respectively, through Thursday. Both are at record highs. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite underperformed this week, down 0.1%.

Investors digested mixed economic data on Thursday. Weekly jobless claims came in at 375,000 last week, matching estimates and declining for a third straight week. Meanwhile, the producer price index, excluding volatile food, trade services and energy components, rose 0.9% last month versus a forecast for a 0.5% gain.

“The hot PPI/home price figures took some of the sheen off the Wed CPI-induced ‘inflation has peaked party’ and this spurred very modest profit taking in cyclical groups following two days of outperformance,” Adam Crisafulli, founder of Vital Knowledge, said in a note.

Stocks are rising to records on the back of a stellar earnings season. The year-over-year earnings growth is expected to be 92.9%, according to Refinitiv. So far about 90% of the S&P 500 companies have handed in their quarterly report, and about 88% of them beat earnings estimates from Wall Street analysts, according to Refinitiv.

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