Stock market news live updates: Stock futures little changed, Alphabet shares jump – Yahoo Finance

Stock futures kicked off the overnight session flat Tuesday as investors digested a slew of mixed corporate earnings results after market close.

Big tech stocks including Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Netflix led the broader market lower during Monday’s regular session. After the bell, however, shares of Google-parent company Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) rose after the internet search giant reported first-quarter sales that topped expectations, reflecting strong trends in the period before the coronavirus pandemic broadened out and dampened many of its customers’ advertising spending plans.

Other major companies’ results already reflected a sharper downturn. Starbucks (SBUX) reported a quarterly same-store sales decline that was worse than consensus analysts expected, and said the negative impact to current-quarter results in the U.S. would likely be “significantly greater” before moderating. Automaker Ford (F) posted automotive sales that dropped 16% in the first quarter over last year and said it expects to lose more than $5 billion in the second quarter, before interest and taxes.

Looking ahead to Wednesday, investors will be awaiting the government’s first print on first-quarter gross domestic product, which is expected to show U.S. economic activity contracted for the first time since 2014 in the first three months of the year. The report will capture the only early impacts of the coronavirus and ensuing business closures in the U.S., with many economists expecting the contraction to deepen in the second quarter.

Later Wednesday afternoon, the Federal Reserve will release its latest monetary policy decision. With the lower end of the Fed’s target range for benchmark interest rates already at zero, market participants will instead focus on the Fed’s remarks around its existing, extensive list of stimulus measures and whether this arsenal could be boosted further as the central bank assesses the path forward for the virus-stricken economy.

“The Fed’s unconventional policy measures have already eclipsed even those seen during the Global Financial Crisis, including open-ended asset purchases which have seen the Fed buy $1.2trn [trillion] of Treasury securities in only four weeks and the announcement of a host of new lending facilities aimed at households and non-financial businesses – initially worth up to $2.3trn,” Andrew Hunter, senior U.S. economist for Capital Economics, wrote in a note. “With the Fed repeatedly ruling out the use of negative interest rates, the fed funds target range will not be cut any further and we expect it to remain at the current near-zero level for the foreseeable future.”

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Here were the main moves at the start of the overnight session for U.S. equity futures, as of 6:03 p.m. ET:

• S&P 500 futures (ES=F): down 0.75 points, or 0.03%, to 2,866.5

• Dow futures (YM=F): down 38 points, or 0.16%, to 24,007.00

• Nasdaq futures (NQ=F): up 34.25 points, or 0.39%, to 8,754.00

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