LONDON: U.S. stocks looked poised to open higher Friday as investors cheered Amazon.com Inc.’s surprise profit report, but the main benchmarks remained on track for weekly losses after three straight days of declines .
Nasdaq 100 futures NQU5, +0.28% showed the most spark, rising 16 points, or 0.4%, to 4,636, as Amazon AMZN, -1.25% jumped 18% in premarket action after it unexpectedly posted a rise in quarterly profit late Thursday. The online retailer is one of the tech-heavy index’s biggest components.
S&P 500 futures ESU5, +0.14% edged up 4.50 points, or 0.2%, to 2,103, while those for the Dow Jones Industrial Average YMU5, +0.10% gained 204 points, or 0.1%, to 17,700.
In this past week, the stock market has been hurt by disappointing quarterly reports from big companies like Apple Inc. AAPL, -0.05% Caterpillar Inc. CAT, -3.61% and IBM IBM, +0.86% as well as a commodities selloff. On Thursday, the S&P 500 SPX, -0.57% Dow DJIA, -0.67% and Nasdaq COMP, -0.49% all dropped for a third session in a row.
