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The blue-chip Dow outperformed other Wall Street indexes on Thursday, notching its longest winning streak in almost six years, supported by gains in Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) after the healthcare conglomerate’s strong forecast.
The S&P 500 and Dow were on track to end the week higher, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lagged after sharp losses in the previous session as earnings reports from Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) and Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) failed to dazzle.
The megacap electric automaker recovered 1.5% in premarket trading on Friday, while the streaming video company added 0.3%.
The Nasdaq has risen 34.4% this year, supported by a sharp rally in megacap growth and technology names on optimism over artificial intelligence, a relatively resilient U.S. economy and expectations the end of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate hike cycle was on the horizon.
Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) raised U.S. economic growth forecast for the year on a strong industrial sector and more public investment in infrastructure and expects a more “comfortable” soft-landing for the economy.
While the Fed is widely expected to go for a 25 basis point hike at its July 25-26 meeting next week, market participants have been mixed as to where it will go in the ensuing months.
“We expect Powell to cautiously avoid implying that the FOMC has already reached an agreement, but (we) are confident that he does want to slow the pace and that the FOMC will end up skipping in September,” said David Mericle, chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), in a note.
At 5:30 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 35 points, or 0.1%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 8.75 points, or 0.19%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 52.5 points, or 0.34%.
American Express (NYSE:AXP) inched up 0.4%, while top oilfield services firm SLB slipped 0.3% in thin trading ahead of their second-quarter results due later in the day.
Investors were also awaiting a special rebalancing of the multi-trillion dollar Nasdaq 100, which is due at the close of trading on Friday.
