Stock futures were struggling for direction Thursday, suggesting the previous session’s market rebound may be short lived as investors weigh up if it’s worth overpaying for artificial-intelligence stocks.
Futures tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 19 points, effectively trading flat. S&P 500 futures and contracts tied to the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 were also unchanged.
After a rough start to the week, the three major indexes rallied on Wednesday after a stronger-than-expected private-sector jobs number. Stocks also got a boost after multiple Supreme Court justices expressed doubt about President Donald Trump’s usage of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs.
“The slide in stocks was more of a ‘pause for breath’ in the broader risk rally, as opposed to said rally having come to an end,” Michael Brown, strategist at the foreign-exchange brokerage Pepperstone, said. “Yesterday’s U.S. data releases certainly won’t have harmed risk appetite at all.”
Still, concerns remain about whether the AI stocks that have powered the market’s gains in recent years deserve their lofty valuations. Qualcomm seemed to be taking a hit from that pessimism–it topped Wall Street’s quarterly earnings targets, but its shares fell in late trading.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note was down 2 basis points to 4.14% early Thursday. The dollar slipped 0.2% against a weighted basket of its peers, and gold climbed 0.6% to $4,017 an ounce. Bitcoin arrested a recent slide, climbing 1.6% over the past 24 hours to $103,070.