US pre-open: Futures higher following Nvidia Q3 earnings

Wall Street futures were in the green ahead of the open on Thursday as market participants thumbed over Q3 earnings from tech giant Nvidia.

As of 1250 GMT, Dow Jones futures were up 0.36%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 0.24% and 0.12% firmer, respectively.

The Dow closed 139.53 points higher on Wednesday amid escalated geopolitical tensions with Russia after Joe Biden gave Ukraine the green light to use US weapons to strike inside Russia.

Thursday's primary focus was earnings from AI-darling Nvidia from after the close, despite the chipmaker beating expectations on both the top and bottom lines with its Q3 numbers. However, Nvidia shares still headed south in pre-market trading, principally due to sky-high expectations for the world's largest company by market capitalisation.

Trade Nation's David Morrison said: "It's fair to say that sentiment is less positive than it was in the immediate aftermath of this month's US presidential election. Since all four major US stock indices posted record closes less than a fortnight ago, investors have become more cautious.

"This may be the result of some perfectly innocent, and reasonable, profit-taking given the strength and size of the recent run-up. Or it could be the harbinger of something more serious. Certainly, there can't be many investors around who aren't aware that the 'Magnificent Seven' stocks alone account for a third of the S&P 500's value by market capitalisation, and that these stocks are, by many metrics, quite seriously overvalued. At the same time, Treasury bond yields have picked up, providing an attractive investment alternative, and a headwind for equities."

On the macro front, weekly jobless claims numbers will be out at 1330 GMT, as will the Philly Fed's November manufacturing index, while October existing home sales figures will follow at 1500 GMT, and the Kansas Fed's November manufacturing activity index will be released at 1600 GMT.

In the corporate space, both Gap and Intuit were slated to report earnings after the closing bell on Thursday.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com