Wall Street to open higher on Amazon lift, robust GDP data

US stocks were set to open slightly higher on Friday as Amazon’s robust earnings buoyed the FAANG group of high-flying stocks and data showed that the US economy grew at its fastest pace in nearly four years.

Gross domestic product increased at a 4.1% annualised rate as consumers boosted spending and farmers rushed shipments of soybeans to China to beat retaliatory trade tariffs before they took effect in early July.

“At the end of the day, it really is about what is truly going on in the market and what is truly going on is earnings,” said JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade in Chicago.

“There just seems to be a lot of evidence the economy is really humming right along. The only part of the economy that seems to be struggling is wages. But everything else, it is really hard to argue with.”

Shares of Amazon.com jumped 4.1% in premarket trading, set to hit a record high and reclaim the $900 billion market value, after forecasting strong sales and posting a profit that was double analysts’ estimates.

Other so-called FAANG members also rose. Netflix gained 0.6%, while Alphabet’s shares were 0.5% higher.

Facebook, which lost more than $120 billion in market value and sent the Nasdaq tumbling 1% on Thursday after a weak forecast, was up 0.7%.

Twitter sank 12.5% after reporting fewer-than-expected monthly active users and warned that the closely-watched figure could keep falling as it deletes phony accounts.

At 9:03 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 4 points, or 0.02%. S&P 500 e-minis were up 0.25 points, or 0.01% and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 22 points, or 0.3%.

Exxon Mobil dropped 4.5% after reporting lower-than-expected quarterly profit, while Chevron fell 1.6% after results.

Intel fell 5.8% after its fast-growing data centre business missed estimates and it delayed the release of its next-generation chips until the end of 2019.

Advanced Micro Devices, which is expected to have eaten into Intel’s market share, was up 4.4%.

Merck rose 0.3% after its quarterly profit topped analysts’ estimates as sales of its blockbuster cancer drug nearly doubled and the company raised full-year profit outlook.

Earnings of S&P 500 companies are now expected to rise 22.4% in the second quarter, compared with an estimate of 20.7% as of July 1, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Chesapeake Energy jumped 13.9% after it planned to sell all of its Ohio natural gas acreage to privately owned Encino Acquisition Partners for about $2 billion.

Electronic Arts fell 3.2% after the game publisher forecast tepid second-quarter revenue growth.