US pre-open: Futures trade lower following yesterday's heavy losses

Wall Street futures were in the red ahead of the bell on Wednesday as market participants awaited the outcome of the Federal Reserve's two-day policy meeting and digested more mega-cap earnings.

As of 1245 BST, Dow Jones futures were down 0.26%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 0.43% and 0.67% weaker, respectively.

The Dow closed 570.17 points lower on Tuesday, easily wiping out the previous session's gains as the blue-chip index wrapped up its worst month since September 2022.

Central bank policymakers will meet for the second day of their two-day policy meeting on Wednesday, with their latest interest rate decision and policy statement due for 1900 BST. The Fed is broadly anticipated to keep interest rates steady. However, investors have grown worried that chairman Jerome Powell's post-meeting comments may be more hawkish than originally thought as a result of a run of hotter-than-expected inflation reports.

In the corporate space, Amazon said after the close on Tuesday that profits had more than tripled in the first quarter of its current trading year but still delivered quarterly revenues that fell short of estimates on the Street, while shares in chipmaker maker Advanced Micro Devices headed south after delivering in-line revenue guidance for its current trading quarter

Starbucks also tanked after slashing its outlook following disappointing same-store sales, while CVS Health was firmly in the red after reporting disappointing earnings and lowering profit guidance.

As far as Wednesday was concerned, Pfizer surpassed revenue estimates and lifted full-year profit guidance as the drugmaker benefitted from cost-cutting efforts and strong sales within its non-Covid segments, while Qualcomm and DoorDash will both report after the close of trading.

On the macro front, mortgage applications fell 2.3% in the week ended 26 April, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, extending the two-month-high decline of 2.7% seen in the previous week. Last week's drop followed another fresh increase in mortgage rates as expectations that high inflation will force the Federal Reserve to hold interest rates at a higher clip for longer triggered an increase in Treasury yields. Applications to refinance a home fell 3%, while applications to purchase a new home fell by 2%.

Still to come, ADP employment change figures were due at 1330 BST, S&P Global's April manufacturing index will follow at 1445 BST, and March construction spending numbers, ISM's manufacturing PMI and March JOLTS job openings numbers were all due out at 15000 BST.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com