By Medha Singh and Shivani Kumaresan
(Reuters) – Wall Street was set to open higher on Friday as Disney and Cisco jumped after reporting upbeat results, but investors remained cautious at the end of a volatile trading week that saw record surges in coronavirus cases as well as increased hopes of an effective vaccine.
Cisco Systems Inc and Walt Disney Co were the top gainers among Dow components trading before the bell. Futures tracking the blue-chip index were 0.7% higher.
The network gear maker jumped 7.2% premarket as it gained from a work-from-home driven surge in demand, while Disney rose 3% as its rapidly growing streaming video business, and a partial recovery at its theme parks limited its quarterly loss.
“We are finishing an extremely strong earnings season with an exclamation point on Disney’s impressive earnings,” said Ryan Detrick, senior market strategist at LPL Financial in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“Corporate America is still optimistic about the future and that’s helping stocks recover, along with positive vaccine news earlier this week.”
The third-quarter earnings season is in its final stretch with about 90% of S&P 500 companies having reported so far, according to Refinitiv IBES data. Overall profit is expected to fall 7.8% from last year, a significant improvement from a 21.4% slump forecast on Oct. 1.
Wall Street’s major indexes broadly fell on Thursday as U.S. coronavirus cases jumped and investors weighed how fast an effective vaccine would be rolled out.
More than a dozen U.S. states reported a doubling of new COVID-19 cases in the last two weeks, with Chicago’s mayor issuing a month-long stay-at-home advisory on Thursday.
Positive data from a late-stage vaccine development earlier this week lifted demand for sectors that usually benefit from an upswing in the economy, such as financial and energy stocks, putting the S&P 500 and Dow on track for weekly gains.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq, however, is headed for a weekly decline as investors booked profits in market-leading technology stocks, which have benefited from a stay-at-home environment.
At 08:21 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were up 0.73% and S&P 500 E-minis were up 0.67%. Nasdaq 100 E-minis were up 0.62%.
Heavyweights Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc edged up about half a percent, while big Wall Street banks also rose about 0.7% each.
(Reporting by Medha Singh and Shivani Kumaresan in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)
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