Stock futures opened sharply lower Wednesday as soft overseas trade and a handful of weak earnings reports factored into early trade.
X The Dow Jones industrial average and S&P 500 each dug in 0.4%, pulling back after posting solid gains on Tuesday. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.5%, as Apple (AAPL) dropped 0.5% as all four of the FANG stocks traded lower at the open.
The Dow held above its 50-day line of support, while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 fell back below that important psychological market. Strong performances on Tuesday improved the market's overall outlook, but the Nasdaq is still overshadowed by nine distribution days, a sign that institutional selling is working against the market's uptrend.
Retailers in Focus: Wal-Mart/Google, Home Depot/Lowe's
Retailers marked out the high and low ends of the Dow industrials. Wal-Mart (WMT) climbed 0.5% following news it would partner with Alphabet's (GOOGL) Google to develop voice-activated Wal-Mart ordering capability into Google's virtual assistant program.
Wal-Mart is trading just below an 80.57 buy point in an eight-week cup base.
On the Dow, Home Depot (HD) shed 1.2%, apparently feeling some hurt as competitor Lowe's (LOW) dived 5% after reporting a broad second-quarter miss. On Tuesday, Home Depot shares rose 1.2% in weak trade, as the stock attempts to start up the right side of three-month consolidation.
In other earnings news, chipmaker Cree (CREE) opened 9% lower. The company reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings in line and revenue above analyst expectations, but its Q1 earnings guidance was far below targets.
La-Z-Boy (LZB) reclined 18%, hurt by fiscal first-quarter earnings and revenue that fell short of expectations, as rising expenses related to acquisitions hindered results.
Salesforce.com (CRM) edged up 0.7%, although second-quarter earnings and revenue reported late Tuesday narrowly topped analyst views. And while third-quarter and full-year guidance was strong, management kept its 2018 earnings outlook flat, while raising revenue guidance.
Salesforce stock has been struggling to gain altitude above a 92.09 flat base buy point.
Snapchat parent Snap (SNAP) stepped up 0.6% at the start of trade, after research from eMarketer showed Snapchat and Facebook (FB) unit Instagram eating into Facebook's market share among 12- to 17-year-olds. Facebook shares slipped 0.2%.
Snap has rallied 29% off an Aug. 8 low, but is trading 15% below its March IPO price.
Researcher Markit releases its composite purchasing managers index at 9:45 a.m. ET. The Commerce Department's July new homes sales numbers are due out at 10 a.m. ET, with the Energy Information Administration reporting its weekly oil inventories estimates at 10:30 a.m. ET.
Overseas, Asia's markets ended mixed with benchmarks in Hong Kong and Tokyo up 0.9% and 0.3%, respectively. Stocks in Europe traded effectively flat near midday.
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