The Federal Reserve’s interest rate announcement is displayed on the screen as traders work on the floor of the NYSE on October 28, 2026 in New York City, USA.
Gina Moon | Reuters
Stock futures were under pressure on Thursday, weighed down by the latest corporate earnings, with two Dow stocks expected to fall more than 10%.
Nasdaq 100 futures Futures fell 1.3%. S&P500 It fell 0.5%. Dow Jones Industrial Average Futures fell 171 points, or 0.3%.
alphabet The company suffered a 10% loss in pre-market trading after third-quarter adjusted earnings per share and sales fell short of expectations. Google’s parent company had negative free cash flow of $9.07 billion. The company maintained its full-year capital investment forecast at $195 billion to $205 billion.
caterpillar The stock price fell 9%. The industrial giant reported better-than-expected sales and profits in the third quarter, but sales at its construction industry business were slightly below expectations.
in contrast, microsoft LSEG said shares rose 2.6% in pre-market trading after growth in the software giant’s Azure cloud infrastructure business outpaced revenue and bottom line in the fiscal first quarter.
Neocloud fell after Microsoft’s lower-than-expected capital spending showed infrastructure partners were taking longer to deliver data center capacity.
The results come amid a focus on artificial intelligence trade. AI stocks etc. iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) and Round Hill Memory ETF (DRAM)I had a rough time for most of October, but I’ve started to feel better over the last few days. But both funds fell on Thursday, with SOXX down more than 2% and DRAM more than 3%.
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve decided to keep interest rates on hold, keeping the central bank’s benchmark rate in the 3.75-4% range. The decision to keep rates on hold had been widely expected after the Federal Open Market Committee decided to raise interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point in September.
Central bank policymakers said inflation “remains high” but said they were waiting for “more information to accumulate” before taking further action.
Daniel Silk, head of global short-term duration and liquidity at Janus Henderson Investors, said the Fed’s decision “could be interpreted as a bit dovish at the last minute, but it’s better seen as a sign of patience rather than a shift away from a tightening bias.” “The door to further tightening remains open, but it appears the commission will wait for data to verify the need for further measures.”
