WALL Street's main indexes were set for a higher open on Friday as robust quarterly results from Alphabet and Microsoft lifted growth stocks, while fresh evidence of progress on the inflation front rekindled hopes of an interest rate cut this year.
Alphabet jumped 11.7% in premarket trading after the Google-parent announced its first-ever dividend, a $70 billion stock buyback and beat estimates for first-quarter results.
The share surge could lead to the search giant's market value topping $2 trillion, if premarket gains hold.
Lifting sentiment further, Microsoft gained 3.9% on beating Wall Street estimates for third-quarter revenue and profit, driven by gains from AI adoption across its cloud services.
Other growth stocks also rose on the results, with Amazon.com and Nvidia up 3.0% and 2.0%, respectively. Meta Platforms added 0.3%, after its near 11% drop in the previous session, which was its steepest fall in 18 months.
Aiding further gains, the personal consumption expenditures(PCE) price index rose 0.3% in March, in line with estimates by economists polled by Reuters. In the 12 months through March, PCE inflation advanced 2.7% against expectations of 2.6%.
Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the PCE price index increased 0.3% last month against expectations of a 0.3% increase. Annually, it came in at 2.8% versus forecasts of 2.7%.
"This is a good number in (the sense) that it doesn't hurt the confidence of the Fed that inflation's moving in the right direction, but it doesn't necessarily add to their confidence (that) it's going towards their 2% target on a sustainable basis," said Steve Wyett, chief investment strategist at BOK Financial.
Money markets priced in a firmer chance of a rate cut in September after the data.
Yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell after the data, last standing at 4.6774%.
The upbeat earnings across several sectors this week have propped up Wall Street's main stock indexes for weekly gains, with the benchmark S&P 500 looking to snap three weeks of losses while the Nasdaq is set to end four straight weeks of declines.
At 8:46 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 76 points, or 0.2%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 43 points, or 0.85%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 182.5 points, or 1.04%.
Among other stocks, Snap surged 24.9% premarket after the social media firm beat first-quarter estimates for quarterly revenue and user growth. Shares of Pinterest also rose 4.2%.
Exxon Mobil lost 1.6% after the largest U.S. oil company missed analysts' estimates with a 28% year-on-year drop in first-quarter profit.
Intel dropped 8.5% on forecasting second-quarter revenue and profit below estimates as it faces weak demand for its traditional data center and PC chips and trails in the surging market for AI components. - Reuters
