US pre-open: Futures little changed ahead of final session of 2023

As of 1145 GMT, Dow Jones futures were up 0.06%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 0.07% and 0.13% higher, respectively.

The Dow closed 53.58 points higher on Thursday as the blue-chip index stretched its Santa Clause rally another session.

Despite the Nasdaq's modest losses in the previous session, all three major indices were on track to deliver their ninth winning week in a row ahead of the bell on Friday, driven by a late-year rally and a bounce back from a disappointing third quarter for stocks. Of particular note, the S&P 500 will enter the session less than 0.5% from what would be a new record high for the index.

Swissquote's Ipek Ozkardeskaya said: "Here we are, on the last trading day of the year. This year was completely different than what was expected. We were expecting the US to enter recession, but the US printed around 5% growth in the Q3. We were expecting the Chinese post-Covid reopening to boost the Chinese growth and fuel global inflation, but a year after the end of China's zero-Covid measures, China is suffocating due to an unexpected deflation and worsening property crisis. We were expecting last year's negative correlation between stocks and bonds to reverse – as recession would boost bond appetite but batter stocks. None happened.

"The million-dollar question is what will happen next year. Of course, we don’t know, nobody knows, and our crystal balls completely missed the AI rally that marked 2023, yet the general expectation is a cool down in the technology rally, and a rebalancing between the big tech stocks and the S&P493 on narrowing profit lead for the Magnificent 7 compared to the rest of the index in 2024."

On the macro front, December's Chicago purchasing managers' index will be published at 1445 GMT.

No major corporate earnings were slated for release on Friday.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com