MW: Stock futures wobble as General Electric reports
By Barbara Kollmeyer, MarketWatch
MADRID (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stock futures pulled back from earlier gains on Friday, with investors turning their focus to results from General Electric and others, after the rout in the previous session owing to threats of profit-hindering regulation for banks.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average reversed earlier gains to drop 12 points to 10,326. Those for the S&P 500 were down a half point to 1,110.50, and futures for the Nasdaq 100 rose 1 point to 1,842.
U.S. stocks suffered their worst one-day decline in nearly three months Thursday as bank shares tumbled under the threat of new regulations, and the basic-materials sector fell on global tightening worries. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 213.27 points or 2%, in its second straight triple-digit point decline.
Ahead of the open, GE reported fourth-quarter earnings of 28 cents a share on revenue of $41.4 billion, just edging past what analysts were expecting. Shares of GE fell 1.7% in Frankfurt. The company said it sees solid growth in 2011 and beyond.
McDonald's (MCD 63.18, +0.17, +0.27%) and Kimberly-Clark (KMB 61.11, -0.98, -1.58%) will also report Friday.
Among shares on the move, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD 8.45, -0.54, -6.01%) slipped 5.2% in preopen trade. The company registered its first profitable quarter in three years, helped by a settlement with Intel (INTC 20.70, -0.14, -0.67%) late Thursday.
Google (GOOG 558.00, -24.98, -4.29%) was down 4.5% in preopen, as the Internet services giant's nearly $2 billion in profits didn't top some expectations.
Stocks took a hit Thursday after President Barack Obama proposed the most extensive curbs on market speculation by banks since the outbreak of the recent financial crisis, which came as markets fretted over prospects of China cooling its economy further. Asia stocks suffered sharp losses Friday, focused on commodity-linked shares and financials overnight, while Europe was also down with banks lower.
Shares of Barclays (BCS 17.25, -0.97, -5.32%) fell in London and dropped 7.4% in preopen.
Christian Tegllund Blaabjerg, Copenhagen-based market strategist at Saxo Bank, said investors should remember Obama's bank proposals won't get anywhere if they aren't put into practice on a global scale, which may be impossible. "Short-term fluctuations will happen on the back of this, sure, but in the longer term, there is no way there will be a global agreement on how to implement these proposals," said Blaabjerg.
He also sees little impact on most bank earnings, outside of perhaps Goldman Sachs (GS 161.00, -0.16, -0.10%) , from the proposals. "When people starting to look at these proposals in more depth, I think they will realize this is not going to curb earnings for the big banks," he said.
Gold futures were down $13 to $1,090.30 an ounce, while crude oil futures fell 26 cents to $75.82 a barrel.
The dollar slipped against the yen, owing to a fall in Asian equities that usually prompts investors to seek the perceived safer, lower-yielding yen that benefits whenever investors are averse to risk.
